


The Fruit of Your Intents

by the_rck



Series: House of Sulfur and Mercury [2]
Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Captivity, Dark Merlin, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, Non-Consensual Bondage, POV First Person, Revenge, Shapeshifting, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-13 22:28:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7988410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin spent two years as a prisoner of his former friend, Luke, and of Luke’s mother, Jasra. Once he’s free, he realizes just how much of himself he’s lost and wants revenge. </p><p>Partly Merlin putting himself back together and partly him taking Luke apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Luke does something stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a poem by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz called "She Proves the Inconstancy of the Desires and Criticism of Men Who Accuse Women of What They Themselves Cause."
> 
> Written for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang 2016.
> 
> Like my story, "They Come Knocking Like Hearts Asking," this story goes AU from when Merlin is in the Blue Cave. Some of what happens in that story is part of the backstory here, but the hopeful ending in that story didn't happen. Instead, things got worse for Merlin. I recommend reading that story (it's about 4500 words) if you feel you need the backstory.
> 
> The series this is part of contains branching AUs. An explanation of the splits can be found [here](http://somethingdarker.dreamwidth.org/36076.html).
> 
> Additional warnings and clarifications in end notes.

I couldn't stop rubbing my wrists. I think part of me didn't believe that I was actually free. I stared at Luke. “Why?” I saw no need to be more specific.

He looked wary. I suppose he was realizing just how thoroughly pissed off I was. I can’t imagine why that should have surprised him. Did he think I’d been having fun?

I bared my teeth at him.

He reached over and touched my cheek. “I wanted to. I figured it wouldn't make you more likely to kill me when we got to this point.”

He was a fool. I hadn’t thought that before. He should never have taken the cuffs off me. Or done it a hell of a lot sooner. Months sooner. As soon as he saw what his mother was doing. Instead-- 

If I didn’t hurt him very, very badly, he’d be lucky.

One of my hands shot up to grab his wrist. I squeezed.

His breath hissed between his teeth, but he made no effort to pull away. His eyes reminded me of him right on the verge of something exhilarating and potentially deadly. Which he’d already done.

“I'm pretty sure that, no matter what I do, Ghostwheel will help me. Not you.” I hoped I was right. The things Ghostwheel had said seemed to suggest that, but he'd been angry with me before. And he hadn’t rescued me when he could easily have. 

I stepped in closer to Luke and pulled his body against mine. There was a tree nearby large enough to serve, so I shoved him against the trunk and kissed him. I was no more gentle about it than he had been with me an hour earlier. Or any time before that.

I pressed one thigh hard against his groin and ground it against him.

He groaned, and I could feel his cock hardening.

I kept our bodies pressed close but separated our faces enough so I could speak. “Is that because it's me or because of what I might do to you?”

His breathing was unsteady. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

He’d fucked me when I couldn't say no, and now he wanted me to reciprocate. Punching him would have been simpler. Especially if he thought this was about sex.

I touched the side of his face. “You don't get that so easy.” I kissed him again, much more gently this time. “I definitely want to beat the shit out of you, but if you're getting off on it, that's a different Shadow entirely.” I took three steps backwards and gave him a long, appraising look, making it as frankly sexual as I could manage.

He flushed, and his breath came fast. He actually thought he wanted what I might do. Maybe he thought I had been having fun. Maybe. 

Definitely a fool.

“I'm pretty damned sure your mother's looking for us now. I've no mind to wait for her.”

He looked unmistakably disappointed. “Yeah. She wouldn't approve. Me doing you, yes, but not…”

I couldn't think what to say. Part of me wanted to warn him. Part of me wanted to hurt him as he'd hurt me, worse if I could manage it. I looked away. “You should run.” So I was going to warn him. Would he realize how vulnerable he would be anywhere that Ghostwheel could find him?

If he didn't, would I do anything about it? I hated him. I… loved him, too. That was a terrible combination. For him. I wished he hadn't put the idea into my head. Punching him wouldn’t make me like him, like her. This… I wouldn’t. Would I?

I probably would. I wanted to. I didn’t, but I might.

I flicked my fingers at him. “Go.” Before I changed my mind.

He made no move to leave. I don't think he had any idea what he was risking. “I'm going to tell her I put you somewhere, that I didn't like you and her together. If you escape there, I didn't let you go.”

I didn't think Jasra would buy it, but that was Luke's problem. And Jasra had been trying to figure out what to do with me, so maybe she'd pretend. I narrowed my eyes. Did she guess that I could be dangerous? I’d hidden that as well as I could, but she wasn’t stupid. Would she think about what I might do? 

Luke wasn’t thinking at all as far as I could tell. Fantasizing, maybe, but... Did he still think we were friends?

“Later, Luke.” I put menace into the words, the last warning I was going to give. Because we used to be friends. Then I called the Logrus to mind and pulled myself away before I could change my mind.


	2. In which Merlin monologues and talks to Ghostwheel

I didn't particularly want to deal with either side of my family, so, once I had retrieved Frakir, I found a place near Ghostwheel’s Shadow. I wasn't sure I could construct a refuge that far from Chaos, but I thought I'd try. I drew together pieces of different Shadows in the fashion of a Waysmaster. I’d never done it before, so I made mistakes, but it didn’t really matter. I needed to build something to show myself that I still could, that I could find solutions to problems.

Stitching things together was harder than I thought it would be, and I suspected that, for quite a long time to come, I’d be doing maintenance constantly, but when I finally found the knack, I was surprised that I hadn’t seen it before. It wasn’t easy exactly. It just made sense.

Ghostwheel watched, made suggestions, and asked about how everything worked. Then he wandered off for a while. When he returned, the Logrus reverberated through him. He seemed as stable as ever, so I didn't comment. I just mentioned that the Pattern in Tir might be easier to access than any other. He, after all, didn’t need to worry about falling. It wasn't so obvious when he did that, but I'm sure he did.

As far as I could tell Luke wasn't trying to avoid Ghostwheel. Ghostwheel mentioned conversations from time to time. Luke didn't seem to understand that he was in any sort of danger.

Given that, I tried not to think about Luke because I was afraid that, if I did, I'd do things that would make me hate myself. Or, worse, that I'd do them and not care at all. Ghostwheel wouldn't stop me, so I had to.

I very much wanted to talk to my father. Not that I wanted to tell him what had happened. I just thought he might understand my mixed feelings. He might also understand how lonely I felt. Or not. He seemed to have a knack for making friends, real friends, that I lacked.

My Ways kept getting bigger. And emptier. I asked Ghostwheel to look for Corwin and for people in desperate need of a place. Those last were far too easy to come by. He seemed to understand the part I didn't say, and any number of them were pretty and willing to please. I tried to be careful about that. I didn’t want anyone who wasn’t willing, completely willing, but I wasn’t pretending to be one of them any more. I had no delusions of godhood, but I also knew that, from where they stood, I might as well be. 

It’s hard to say no to a god.

I had been taught that power was something inborn, but I wondered, as I tried not to think of Julia, how much could be learned. For Amber, power was certainly in the blood. It was something one had or didn’t, and that couldn’t be changed. But that was only the Pattern. Amber tended not to pay as much attention to smaller things. 

For the Courts, things that Jasra had said led me to believe that there was darkness in the depths of the Courts that, as one of the privileged, I’d never seen. Knowledge and power-- even second hand power-- were the currency of survival.

If I had seen that, would I have been better prepared for Jasra?

Amber’s darkness I knew about-- Mother had taught it to me very thoroughly. But neither the castle in Amber nor the land around it were automatically lethal to the unwary. If the unpleasant people who ruled by virtue of who had fathered them stayed away, most people would be better off. 

If the people in the Courts who had power all vanished, everyone else would die. 

And, if I left for too long, the people in my Ways would also die. Ghostwheel might manage the Ways without me, but I wasn’t sure he’d think to. Maybe many more years would see my Ways stable enough for me to leave for an extended time, but… That thought held no attraction at all. I went out just long enough at a time to find things that my people might be able to cultivate or copy and use.

My Ways were safe.

I’d structured the place so that there were only two ways to leave. The Logrus would do the job adequately. Anyone without access to the Logrus would have to find Ghostwheel and persuade him to let them out. Getting in was actually harder. Only Ghostwheel and I could come straight through. I really didn’t want unexpected company.

For want of anything better to do, I started teaching sorcery to anyone interested. Ghostwheel attended and proved a better teacher than I, so I started teaching painting and programming. Ghostwheel understood both but not on a scale that would work for most people.

I think, mostly, I was curious about what people could learn. There may have been, too, somewhere in the back of my head, the idea that having powerful people around me might make me safer. Luke and Jasra were still out there and Jurt and Julia, and I had no idea who else might come after me. Apart from Ghostwheel, I could only think of a handful of people who might help if I asked, and most of them would extract a price. I’d had enough of paying.

None of this, not even the getting laid regularly part, kept me from thinking about Luke. I wondered if he was really into us forcing each other or if it was just the only way he thought he could get sex with me without betraying his father. I also wondered if I wanted him for him or just as a target. 

But I didn’t hurt anyone else, and I had no interest in Jasra that way. In the darkest moments of those long nights, I admitted that I feared her more than Luke even though she’d hurt me less obviously, even though, when unbound, I was certainly stronger, more powerful, than she was.

I didn’t let myself think about Julia. Not at all.

In an effort to get away from that, I thought more about my parents. I knew my mother well but not so much about my father. I couldn’t be sure what he’d do, but I had trouble believing that he'd just wandered off. Random had people searching, but there were two places he couldn't look-- the Shadows cast by my father's Pattern and the Courts of Chaos.

I wasn't ready to face my father's Pattern, but the Courts were my home. I might not want to go back, but I could. Or, better, Ghostwheel could. He could be in many places at once, and I was more than a little afraid of what my mother would see in me now. Beyond almost anything, I didn’t want her to know.

Ghostwheel accepted the commission with enthusiasm and told me that he'd been worried that I wasn't paying enough attention to things outside our Ways. “Luke says a lot of people are looking for you. Someone figured out that Jasra had you. Luke thinks Jurt or Julia let it slip because Jasra wouldn't let them… do what they wanted with you. He also thinks no one has figured out that she doesn't have you any longer but that that's a matter of time.”

“Luke tells you a lot of things.” I wondered who might be on the list implied by ‘a lot of people.’ I shook out my shoulders in an effort to let that go.

“Yes.”

I wasn't sure I'd get anything if I pushed, but I knew I wouldn't if I didn't. “Should I bring Luke here?” Ghostwheel liked Luke, so maybe Ghostwheel would tell me no. Someone had to. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep doing it.

“It would be easy,” he said which didn't answer my question. He took a few seconds before going on. For Ghostwheel, that was like taking hours or days to consider. “I think he wants you to. He asks about you a lot. I think--” His voice became more certain. “--wanting things he shouldn't want hurts him.”

“Wrong like me at all or wrong like wanting me to hurt him?” I wasn’t sure that I could explain to Ghostwheel that Luke might also very much not want what I was likely to do and that, once I had Luke, what he wanted or didn’t wouldn’t matter at all. I wasn’t sure I wanted Ghostwheel to understand that darkness about me. Sometimes, that was all that stopped me.

Another long pause. “Both? Could it be both? But why does it matter? You want him, and it would be easy. I don't see why you shouldn't.”

I hadn’t realized that I was that obvious. “If I just wanted something brief, I would. We're enemies.” I was pretty sure Ghostwheel wouldn't understand. “I could hurt most enemies and enjoy it.”

“Do you have anyone in mind? I could bring them here.”

Did he actually understand what he was offering? I suspected not. Those people weren’t real to him. I’m not sure many people were. It gave him a simplicity of approach that I rather envied. I wondered if he thought Luke was real.

I thought about the people I'd loathed when I'd been trapped in the Courts. “Maybe just kill them. That’s… cleaner, but I don't know what that would do in a big picture sort of way.” People I loved were still in the Courts, so it mattered. I might not want to see them or talk to them, but I wanted them safe.

“We could find out.” Ghostwheel went silent, and I thought he was giving me time to think. Then he said, “Luke's my prisoner now. I put him in the maze. He'll be very glad to see you in a few hours. Or days.”

I swallowed hard, and my guts twisted. Ghostwheel might let Luke go if I asked, but I didn't want to. I wanted what Ghostwheel was offering, wanted it powerfully. “What does he have with him?” I’d need a different approach to fighting Luke if he was carrying Werewindle. “And what are the current settings for the maze?” The maze had no exit as such. I used it for meditation sometimes and for a challenging environment sometimes. Some settings could make the place actively dangerous.

“Dark, cold, and wet,” Ghostwheel said, answering my second question first. “Noisy, too, but I think he’ll figure out that there aren’t actually monsters down there.” He hesitated then added, “I didn’t think monsters were worth the risk.”

I nodded. Jasra had told me that Luke couldn’t shapeshift, that Brand hadn’t wanted him to learn. That meant Luke didn’t have my options for dealing with an unpleasant environment. “Add random flashes of extremely bright light.” I tapped my fingers on my thigh. “And rats. He can deal with those.” I was doing this. I was really doing this. I ached to have him with me right then, but I knew that Ghostwheel’s approach would give me more psychological power. I was going to need that. Luke knew where all of my buttons were. Where they used to be.

“He’s trying very hard to Shadowshift,” Ghostwheel told me. “I waited until he was in bed before I took him, so he doesn’t have much of anything. I took all of his things and put them in a storage room. The sword tried to bite me, but I didn’t let it get away. It might have told someone.”

I wondered how long it would take Jasra to realize Luke was missing and what she’d do-- try to do-- about it. I couldn’t think of any way that she’d know to come here. I’d taken great pains about that. No one at all could find us, no matter how they were looking.

But Werewindle might be a problem.

That gave me an idea. “About Corwin-- If you can’t find him, can you find Greyswandir? It may or may not be with him. If it’s not, it will want to be, and we might be able to use that.”

Ghostwheel took a moment to answer. “I’m pretty sure it’s in the Courts somewhere.”

Which meant that, if Corwin had ever left the Courts, he hadn’t done it under his own power. “I think-- I hope-- that that means he’s still alive.” I’d have to ask Luke how Werewindle came to his hand. Assuming he was willing to talk to me given what I was doing and was going to do to him. I had no intention of giving him the illusion of choice that Jasra had given me. I wondered how hard he’d fight to keep himself whole. I hadn’t managed it. Maybe he could.

But I kind of hoped that he couldn’t and that he’d have the horror of seeing himself crumble.

“I’ll try to narrow it down,” Ghostwheel said, interrupting my thoughts.

“Think of it as an opportunity to find out more about--” I waved a hand to indicate a larger space. “Anything you overhear might tell us something, not necessarily about Corwin-- There are other matters we ought to be paying attention to.” I didn’t much want to, but living in Shadow and ignoring both sides of my family hadn’t gotten me anywhere good. I clenched my hands. “I don’t want anyone to be able to fuck with us again.”

I took a few moments to breathe deeply and calm myself. Ghostwheel waited for me.

Eventually, I stood up and stretched. “I have a painting class to teach.” One or two of my students might have the imagination to manage Trump of some sort, and I was considering offering them private lessons. 

But I couldn’t quite let the matter of Luke go, so I added, “Let me know if Luke starts talking or screaming or crying. Let me know if he starts having trouble moving, more than would be explained by the dark. No food.” I hesitated. “For water, nothing beyond whatever the maze might give him. Try not to let him sleep.”

“You want to break him.” Ghostwheel’s voice held no judgment.

“I want him to know that he could be broken.” I wasn’t sure if Ghostwheel would understand the difference. “I’m not going to kill him. He knows that, so when he knows it’s me, that’ll be off the table.” I would probably give Luke a chance to tell me what he wanted and didn’t, but we’d both know that nothing he said mattered unless I wanted it to. He thought he wanted that. Maybe he really did. I couldn’t imagine it, and I didn’t think it fit what I knew of him.

Maybe he thought I’d let him go after. That made a hell of a lot more sense. He seemed to think we were playing a game.

Luke was a fool. I am, too, but not that kind.

I shook my head and changed the subject. “Are there any projects you want to work on? Things I might be able to help with, I mean.” I wanted to remember that there was someone I loved, someone I could interact with in a good way, some relationship that hadn’t been poisoned.

“I have 1698 personal projects currently,” Ghostwheel responded. “I’m unable to tell which ones you might help with. I will endeavor to sort them into categories so that we can discuss them. I… Some of them might benefit from a different angle. I still don’t entirely understand people.”

“You’re people, too,” I told him. When his speech became that stilted, I knew he really wasn’t certain about something and probably not what he was talking about. “You can do things I can’t, but that doesn’t mean--” I waved a hand. I’d do anything for Ghostwheel, and I wasn’t sure he realized that. I didn’t know how to tell him. And really, there was damn all that I could do that he needed.

He made a noise of frustration. “It’s not the same. I don’t want to be like you, but I want to understand. It’s the difference between knowing that negative numbers exist and actually understanding why they exist and how they work. I’ve got rules, but there are exceptions, and I don’t know when, and I--”

I held up my hands. “I can’t really give you better rules. I can try to explain if you describe an interaction, especially if you have specific questions, but I’m not all that good at that sort of thing.” If I had been, I’d have realized that Luke had to be family of some sort. I’d have been ready to be betrayed.


	3. In which Luke very much does not enjoy himself.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explicit. Non-con.

Luke started talking two days in. He was still in control, but he’d realized that he wasn’t getting out without help. “I don’t know what you want,” was the first thing he said out loud. “Talk to me, tell me, and we can deal.” His voice only cracked a little from the dryness of his throat, but I was sure that what he was getting from the small puddles he stumbled on wasn’t nearly enough.

I knew him well enough to hear the traces of frustration in his voice. He wanted to sell me something, but he didn’t know who I was, so he didn’t know what to offer. It surprised me a little that he hadn’t guessed it was me. Maybe he guessed but was afraid to assume. Someone else would be dangerous in a different way.

I wanted very badly to pull him out and fuck him right then. I could. I could do anything I wanted to. I didn’t think that he’d fight me, not physically. I could have taken him out of the maze after five minutes, and he wouldn’t have fought me physically. 

Even if he had tried, he was in my space, and I had all the advantages.

Luke continued talking at intervals for the next twenty four hours. The words varied, but the message didn’t. He was a good enough actor that he never sounded desperate, but I wasn’t surprised when he gave up.

I was surprised when, four hours after speaking for the last time, he stopped in the middle of a corridor, folded himself down to the floor, and curled up tight. I didn’t believe he was beaten, not really, but I thought perhaps it was a calculated surrender. He had to know what would happen if things went on as they were, and I wondered if that was enough.

I felt a little sick to realize that I was enjoying this. I’d known that I wanted very badly to see Luke helpless and suffering, but I hadn’t thought I’d get off on it this way. I hadn’t thought I was a sadist. Maybe it was just that I was that angry? Or maybe… Corwin gave me a very thoroughly sanitized version of his side of the family. Would any of them--? My mother’s kin certainly would, but that was more… more cultural than for personal pleasure. At least, I thought so.

I left Luke where he was and spent some time trying to decide what to do. I don’t think there was ever any chance that I would do anything but what I did do, but I think I wanted to want to do something else. 

Damned if I know where that came from.

I let Luke lie there for nearly two hours. Then, I asked Ghostwheel to move him to a small, doorless suite that had a shower, a sink, and a toilet in one room and a very thin pallet on the floor in the other. I gave him what he needed to clean and dry himself but no food and no blanket or pillow. We kept the lights relatively dim, but after so long in the dark, he obviously found them painfully bright.

I wasn’t surprised that the first thing he did was to drink quite a bit of water. He went slowly enough that I guessed he’d either been without before or had seen someone else hurt themselves that way. Then he turned on the shower and tested the temperature. The fact that the water was warm surprised him. That showed on his face before he managed to flatten his expression. He spent a long time washing and trying to rid himself of the chill.

He investigated the pallet thoroughly before he lay down on it, but he did lie down eventually, and he slept almost immediately. 

******

I let him sleep three hours. It wasn’t long enough for him to be anything like rested. In fact, I was pretty sure it was just long enough for him to wake groggy and disoriented. I didn’t wake him gently, either. I simply had Ghostwheel dump him in the room where I was waiting. This suite also didn’t have a door, but it had several rooms almost as nice as they'd given me. No garden though. I didn't want to be that kind.

This room had a bed and carpet and a number of interesting options, none of which I expected Luke to enjoy.

Unless he really had been fantasizing about me hurting him.

Luke lay on the carpet for about three seconds and gaped. Then he pushed himself up. I could see when he spotted me. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak then thought the better of it. He went very, very still, and I was pretty sure he was trying to figure out how much trouble he was in.

I smiled. I thought he knew me well enough not to find the expression even remotely reassuring. “This is entirely different,” I told him gently. “My place, my rules. We’re going with what I want.” I wrapped a Logrus tendril around his throat and squeezed lightly. “You’re going to cooperate.”

He gave me the barest of nods and lowered his eyes so that he was looking at my feet.

“Would you rather just endure while I do what I want or would you like to try to please me to see if that makes… after less unpleasant?” I kept the words even, doing my best not to give him any hint of my preference. It helped that I wasn’t entirely sure what my preference was.

He hesitated for about three seconds then glanced briefly at my face and started to crawl toward me. When he got close enough, he laid his head on my feet. “Please,” he said. “Please.”

I leaned down and stroked his hair. Then I lengthened my fingernails into claws and raked them over his back. 

He winced and made a small noise of pain. 

I watched blood bead on his skin then ran a finger over one line, lightly first then again with considerably more pressure. 

He trembled but made no further sound. 

“How long will those take to heal?” I used one clawed finger to create a much deeper wound running crosswise to the original scratches. 

He shuddered heavily and pressed his face against my feet. Whatever else might happen, he wasn’t going to fight me.

I gripped his hair firmly. I lifted his head until he had no option but to look at me. I smiled at him. “I’m going to find out what terrifies you, what you can’t bear, and then take you there.”

He flinched, and his fear was obvious, but his eyes had an unexpected brightness that told me that he was-- enjoying might be the wrong word, but I’d seen the look when he free climbed a cliff others considered impossible and when he was about to dive into a fight that he actually considered a challenge. He was excited.

That wouldn’t last.

I ran a bloody claw over his lips just to see what he would do.

His lips parted, and his tongue darted out to touch my claw before vanishing again. 

I slipped the clawed finger into his mouth. I was ready for him to bite, but I was also curious how far this surrender would go.

He sucked and licked my finger, drawing it further into his mouth.

I released my hold on his hair and used that hand to caress the side of his face. “I’m going to make you scream,” I promised him. “Scream your throat raw.” I moved my free hand to his throat and stroked his Adam’s apple. “I don’t know how much you can bear, but I guarantee we’ll go beyond it.”

He closed his eyes and leaned toward me.

I had decided that, for this occasion, I was going to stay mostly in the form he’d known me in, but the urge to change my finger and arm into something I could fuck him with was nearly overwhelming. I settled for lengthening and thickening the finger until he gagged and holding his head with my other hand so that he couldn’t pull back.

He struggled and retched.

“You’ll get better at that,” I told him as I tightened my hold on his head. I had to work to hold him as he started to panic, but he’d been days without food, so he really had no chance. I kept him like that for about thirty seconds then shortened my finger again.

He shuddered then started to tremble uncontrollably. 

I pulled my finger out of his mouth and stroked his hair with my other hand. “I think,” I said softly, “that it might be kinder just to fuck you and do what I’m going to do anyway without letting you surrender or resist.” I leaned down and spoke into his ear. “I’m not actually that kind, and I’ve been thinking about you, wanting you, since we first met.” That last was an exaggeration. I’d been very focused at that point on not doing anything to let my father’s family realize I wasn’t heterosexual. Or male. Or human. They had accepted me as Corwin’s son. I hadn’t wanted them to realize that I wasn’t actually that. At least, not just that.

But Luke had gotten under my skin, even when I thought he was a Shadowdweller. I just hadn’t let it go beyond what I thought was safe. I wonder-- If I had, would I have been able to kill him later?

I took a deep breath and sat back. I studied Luke for several seconds. His eyes were wide, and I couldn’t tell if it was fear or arousal. It might even be both. Fear would win in the end unless he understood what he was getting into better than I thought he did.

It wasn’t as if I was going to give him any more choice than he’d given me.

After a long moment of silence, I said, “What did you think this would look like?” It didn’t matter, but I was curious. Well, it might matter. Sometimes.

He bit his lip.

“You can hardly get more naked.” A lie, but he might not realize that. I wasn’t sure how far I planned to strip him. Planned? That was a lie, too. I controlled him, but I didn’t think I controlled myself. I’d lost that somewhere.

He lowered himself so that his head rested on my feet. “What I want doesn’t matter.”

For a moment, I thought he was just acknowledging reality. Then I realized that was what he wanted. What he thought he wanted. I doubted the reality would be anything like the fantasy. He still thought I was _nice_.

“Please,” he said. “Please. I can’t-- I can’t choose.”

I stroked his back. The scratches I’d made-- even the deep one-- had begun to scab over. I ignored them. He wanted to be forced. He wanted to be made helpless. And it wasn’t just sexual. 

Was what he carried that heavy? Maybe. Did I care? Maybe.

I used a foot to force him upright and back. “Show me,” I told him. In answer to his blank look, I added, “Jerk off. I want to see that.”

He went red and hesitated.

I wondered if he needed to be reminded that he had no choice. “I could give you something that would make you desperate enough to work yourself bloody trying to come. And keep it from happening at all. Drugging people who can’t shapeshift is really fucking easy.” I wasn’t going to do that, not right then. I wanted his attention on me and what I was doing to him.

There was just enough horror in his expression to tell me that he both understood and hadn’t thought of that as a possibility. 

He shifted so that he was kneeling with his legs apart. He started stroking his cock with one hand and rolling his balls in the other. He got hard fast enough that I was sure it wasn’t just the physical stimulation. Being in danger turned him on. I suppose I’d known that.

I wondered how he’d react to pain, real pain.

I watched him until I thought he was right on the brink. “Stop.”

He did. His breath came fast. His hands fell to his sides and clenched and unclenched repeatedly. He fixed his eyes on my face. 

I couldn’t tell if he hated me or not. “Good.” I smiled at him. “Now… Put a hand down there and squeeze your balls until you scream.” I was damned sure he couldn’t, but I was curious to see how hard he’d try and whether he’d fake the squeeze or the scream or both.

He took three deep breaths in succession and set his jaw. He cupped his balls in his right hand but didn’t squeeze. Instead, he studied my face. He was probably hoping for some sign that I didn’t mean it. “Merlin--”

I raised my eyebrows. “Were my words not clear enough?”

“You’re a real asshole.” He still hadn’t moved.

“Is that a surprise?” I stood. “I could, I suppose, just fuck you. I’d make sure you didn’t enjoy that part. I still want screams and tears, and I haven’t had any, so after that, I’d send you back to the maze, back to the darkness.” I stepped around him. “You’re good for longer without food. Or maybe you’d catch a rat. Do you think you could kill a rat and eat it raw? In the darkness?” I let amusement into my voice. “I can see in the dark, so I could visit if I wanted to fuck you again.” I put a hand on his head and pulled his hair so that his neck arched backward. 

His eyes searched for mine, and I felt a jolt of-- Well, I wasn’t ready to think about that, so I pulled harder. He gasped and bent his body backward in an effort to ease the strain on his neck.

“It’s just pain,” I told him. “No big deal.” I could see that he recognized the echo of his own words. He’d said ‘sex’ not ‘pain’-- he’d never tried to convince me that my pain was trivial-- but the point was the same.

He was having trouble breathing, so I let go. He collapsed forward onto his hands.

The curve of his spine spoke of exhaustion, and my hands felt drawn to it, so I went down on one knee behind him. His skin was chilled, and he flinched minutely under my touch. I ran my hands up and down his back, from shoulders to ass, just because I could, because I wanted to.

“Please, Merlin.” 

I almost couldn’t hear the words, but they made me hesitate. “I said please, Luke, more than once.” I’d said it to him. There hadn’t been any point with Jasra. There hadn’t been any point with Luke, either, actually. I closed my eyes for a moment. “Did you think you were being kind?” Did he think I would be just because he hadn’t been as bad as he could have been? I ran fingers the length of his spine and felt him tremble under my hand. “I want to destroy you.” The way he destroyed me. “I also want you just as you are, right at this point of fear… and hope, forever. I only get to break you once.”

“Please,” he said. “Just let me sleep for a while. Please. I’ll do whatever you want after. Even…”

Interesting that he asked for sleep rather than food. “If you can’t say it, I’m betting you can’t actually do it.” I pinched his ass hard.

He barely twitched.

I frowned. I wanted, needed, response. More, I was worried. I could let my mind go from my body if I was willing to risk never being aware again. He could actually escape me that way if he knew how. Could he? Would he? 

“Are you still hard?” I tried to make the question gentle, to sound as if I didn’t care. But, if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t ask. He had to know that.

He didn’t respond for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to and was trying to decide if I should ask again or simply pull him backwards and look for myself.

A flush spread over him. He pushed himself up so that his back was straight. “A little,” he admitted.

I laughed. “Is it the fear, the pain, the danger, the surrender?” Or something else… He might not even know.

“Please let me sleep.”

Interesting. He wasn’t going to answer. “I want you to get off on it,” I told him. “It’s worse that way.” It was worse for me. I wasn’t entirely sure it would be for him, but… I kind of wanted to give him that much, better or worse. A few seconds during orgasm might be the closest he ever got to escape.

That’s when I realized I really was thinking about forever.

I inhaled deeply. My body wanted his. My anger said yes, but I was pretty sure that, once I really started, I wouldn’t ever let him go. He’d certainly hate me. Was I going to hate myself?

“Your choice,” he said in a firmer voice than I’d expected. He rolled his shoulders then shook out his arms.

“Are you hoping that sleep will give you back enough to fight me?” I hadn’t meant to ask him that, but I also didn’t quite want to look at my choices. I squeezed one of his ass cheeks, digging in with my fingernails.

He flinched. “You’re not going to let that happen.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. His expression told me that he understood more than I’d thought he did. “I’m a fool but not that kind. You’re…” He shook his head.

“I trusted you.” I had loved him. “And I won’t believe you if you apologize. I’m never going to believe it. You may regret the repercussions but not the rest of it.”

“I enjoyed fucking you.” There was a viciousness in his tone that I didn’t expect. He didn’t move at all. “I’d do it again. I’d do worse.” He wasn’t looking at me any more. His muscles had tensed.

It was months before it occurred to me that he hadn’t mentioned the beatings.

I raised a hand to strike him then hesitated. I was pretty sure he expected-- even wanted-- that. “That would be simple.” I pushed him forward until his face was on the floor. As I’d expected, that raised his ass enough that I could see it all.

I fumbled with my trousers and wondered why I’d thought wearing them was a good idea. Still, it only took a moment to get them off entirely. I did nothing to make it easier for him, just pushed in and fucked him as brutally as I could. I relished his involuntary noises of pain. By the end, he was sobbing and murmuring, “Please,” over and over. I wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t trying to play me with that. Not that it mattered if he was. I wasn’t buying.

I explored his body, finding out what felt good for us both and what didn’t. A few times, he tried to struggle, tried to stop me physically. Those occasions told me that I’d found something that could break his self-control, so I took careful note.

I fucked him several more times in different positions and with different degrees of pain inflicted. I made sure he came as often as I did, even when he begged me not to. I remembered begging under similar circumstances, and I gave him as much mercy as had been given me. 

After, I allowed him a few hours of sleep on the bed, in my arms. In sleep, he clung to me as if I was the only safety he had. 

Then I woke him and sent him back to the maze. I’d said that I would.


	4. In which Luke needs a doctor

I suspect that knowing his time in the dark would end made things a little easier, psychologically, for Luke, but he still couldn’t see anything and couldn’t trust his ears, and he was starving and cold and exhausted. Watching him, I could tell that, each time he knelt to drink from a puddle, he had a harder time getting to his feet again.

He spoke frequently, always addressing me. He begged for forgiveness. He promised to do whatever I told him to. He talked about Earth and college and things we’d done together. Less about that, though. I think he knew that well was poisoned.

From time to time, he would turn rapidly with his arm outstretched. It took me a while to figure that one out. Then I remembered. He thought I might be in there with him and was reacting to things he thought might be me. Eventually, I realized that part of the reason he was forcing himself to keep moving was that he was afraid of what I might do if I came upon him while he was on the ground.

I considered that, but the maze was cold and wet. I could alter my body to be comfortable, but… I wasn't ready to be other than human with him. I wasn't even ready to be human and anything other than male with him. It would happen, just not yet.

He caught three rats at different times and tried to eat them. Human teeth and human hands aren’t so good at getting through fur to the parts that a human stomach can digest, but he tried, and the smell of dead rat on him kept the rest of them away when he finally collapsed.

When we moved him to the mostly empty cell, I noticed that the deep scratch on his back looked infected. That surprised me. Members of our family don’t tend to have that problem. Then again, members of our family either don’t go through things like that very often or don’t admit it afterward. And he was physically done in. Lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of water, it all added up.

I let him lie on the floor for a while. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to die immediately, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. He needed care, and I didn’t want to give it. I also didn’t want anyone else to do it. Luke was mine and mine only. 

I was almost certain that Ghostwheel couldn’t do what needed doing. Or maybe he could if he used the Logrus creatively and had better control than I did. I just didn’t want to ask Ghostwheel to look that closely at what I had done, what he had helped me to do. I didn’t think he understood it at all, and I really, really didn’t want him to.

In the end, I had someone else do it. Sibyl was a healer, but that wasn’t why I picked her. She was one of the few people who seemed to understand what I could do without being terrified that I’d do it, unprovoked, to her or to someone she loved. She treated Ghostwheel with the respect he deserved even though he looked nothing like her. She, herself, looked like she could have come from Earth, and although I had seen her carry injured men, she looked like a stereotypical grandmother. I didn’t think that, when he roused enough to see her, Luke would find her threatening. 

I might not be fast enough to stop him if he tried to snap her neck. If she died from this, I was going to feel a hell of a lot guiltier about it than I ever would about Luke.

I told her that Luke was my brother. I didn’t think the family tree was likely to interest her, and the relationship was close enough to that. I told her, too, that he was my enemy, that he had betrayed me and stolen my children.

I didn’t like the understanding that came into her eyes at that. She moved as if she might touch me and then thought the better of it. “Even gods know loss,” she said. “That’s why you’ve given our children a home.”

I looked away and didn’t answer. She was close enough to right that I couldn’t. “I want him to live,” I told her without meeting her eyes. “I want him strong enough to endure but not strong enough to hurt anyone.”

“If he, too, is a god, that may be beyond my skill.”

“I know. He has no magic left but the strength of his body.” I wasn’t sure that would reassure her. “I don’t think he’s fool enough to try to hurt you. He doesn’t take pleasure in that.” Not entirely true, but that had been hurting me. I suspected that was entirely different.

She made a noncommittal noise.

“He hasn’t eaten in about a week.” I didn’t think the rats counted. “And he hasn’t had much water or sleep in that time.” The bruises I’d left on his body were still visible which surprised me. I was pretty sure she’d read them accurately. I was also sure that she wouldn’t care how I treated Luke so much as she cared how I treated everyone else, and I had been generous with my people, had hurt none of them. 

I had made sure they knew I could, though.

Just before Ghostwheel took her to the cell, I said, “His name is Luke.” Once she was gone, I said, “I used to love him.” I covered my face but couldn’t find tears.

*****

Sibyl washed Luke’s back first, cleaning the infected scratch with great care. That surprised me because I’d have thought he needed water more. But she was a healer, and I’d never taken time to learn.

After that, she spent a while coaxing water down his throat. He still hadn’t woken up, so it took more patience than I’d have had. She asked Ghostwheel if it would be too dangerous for her to set up an IV, and Ghostwheel asked me.

It wouldn’t be dangerous for anyone except Sibyl, and I assumed she’d considered that, so I said it would be fine and found the equipment and supplies she wanted.

Once she had the equipment, she explained to Ghostwheel that she’d been making Luke drink in the hope that that would make getting a needle into him easier. I’m not sure if she knew I was watching, too. She probably did. She wasn’t any sort of fool.

She told Ghostwheel, too, that Luke had a fever, that she wasn’t sure how sick he was but that she had to assume a systemic infection. If she was wrong, she’d be giving him unnecessary treatment, but if she was right and did nothing, he would certainly die.

I didn’t watch the next few hours. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to look at the possibility that Luke might die-- that I had killed him-- and I really didn’t want to look at why I cared. I just made sure that, when Sibyl asked Ghostwheel for things she considered necessary, she got them.

Ghostwheel told me when Luke woke. Ghostwheel told me when Luke ate a bit of bread soaked in broth and then slept again.

I didn’t go back to watch until Ghostwheel told me that Luke was talking to Sibyl. I was more concerned that Luke would talk Ghostwheel around than I was that he’d talk Sibyl around. Even if he didn’t realize that Sibyl couldn’t do anything for him, I was pretty sure she knew. Ghostwheel, on the other hand, could do a great deal if he choose.

Would it even occur to Luke that, if Ghostwheel asked it, I might be kinder?

When he was talking to Sibyl, Luke never once mentioned me. He never referred to the fact that he was a prisoner or that I’d hurt him. Instead, he asked her questions about where she came from and whether she had family. 

I’m not sure if she realized how much information he was getting from her answers. She may have. She was pretty damned sharp. I think she simply knew, as I did, that the information he gathered wasn’t going to do him the slightest bit of good.

I could see Luke realizing that too. He went stiller and paler behind his smiles. Sibyl may not have seen it. She didn’t know him, and he was still charming, still asked questions, but it was only because he was out of choices. I think, too, he realized that upsetting Sibyl while he was in her hands would be really, really stupid.

For the first time, I wondered if he could stay even remotely sane if he only ever saw me and Ghostwheel. Then I had to decide whether or not I cared and, if I did, what steps I was willing to take to address it.

I wanted to curl up somewhere and not think for a while, but I knew Ghostwheel worried when I did that. And I hadn’t done it for months, maybe even years. Ghostwheel thought I was better.

I ended up resetting the maze to be warmer and drier and to randomly change to challenge my senses. I wandered through it, letting it challenge my ability to shapeshift and so keep my mind occupied. It almost worked.

When I emerged from the maze I knew that I had no intention of letting Luke go, that I was willing to stay in my Ways for the foreseeable future if that was what it took to keep him. I was angry. I wanted to hurt him. I also just wanted him, him and not just his body. Maybe he’d never been my friend, but I… had been attached.

I also enjoyed his pain as a thing apart from my revenge. I really didn’t want that to be true, so I buried it deep.

If I wanted Luke rather than a broken thing in Luke’s body, I would have to be very careful, and I wasn’t sure I could be, not when we were in the same room. I put that aside and looked at what I’d established so far.

The maze was one sort of hell. There wasn’t anything there for him but slow death. The warm, pleasant room with me was another sort of hell. Could I make it more attractive than the maze? Almost certainly. All I had to do was add food. It would be more complicated than that, but I thought Luke would realize that more time with me increased his odds of surviving.

Sibyl hadn’t told him that I’d nearly killed him by sending him back to the maze, but I think he guessed.

Ideally, the bare cell where he was now would be a middle ground where nothing immediately bad happened, where things were more comfortable but where staying long still led inevitably to death. Would he remember leaving me in a place a lot like that and letting me starve?

I wished I’d thought of that before I had Sibyl care for him there. He wouldn’t forget her, and the place would feel safer because of that, even if it wasn’t. He’d remember that, one time, there had been food there. Would he try to make it happen again? Sibyl was a hell of a lot kinder than I was ever likely to be.

Would he remember what he and Jasra had done to people who tried to help me? Probably. But he also knew that I wouldn’t. I hadn’t changed that much, and realizing that was more than a bit of a relief.

I had to keep cycling him through until he really would do anything not to go back to the maze and then send him back a few times more to make the point that that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t sure that would bend him rather than shattering him. I merely thought it had better odds of success than any of my other ideas.

As to other things-- I’d wait to see what I thought was necessary and improvise everything else.


	5. In which Merlin and Luke spend some quality time together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explicit. Non-con.

I pulled back until I was sitting straight in my chair. “Do you think you can stand?”

Luke nodded and, when I waved a hand to indicate that I wanted him to, forced himself to his feet. He only swayed a little. He glanced at my face and then away. I saw no indication that he thought being on his feet gave him any sort of advantage. He seemed to be studying what he could see of the room. His eyes lingered on the doors. He hadn’t even noticed them last time.

I laughed softly as I rose to my feet. “There’s no exit here, either. More space, more… luxury. No exit. Whether you stay here or end up… elsewhere depends on how I feel about you after we’re done.” I stepped in close to him. “I’m not going to put you in a room with an exit any time soon.”

“Merlin--” He went completely still and even paled a little.

I ran a hand over his chest. “You can use my name. I don’t mind.” I used the Logrus to tug chains down from the ceiling and manacled Luke’s arms over his head. I worked slowly and deliberately, wanting to see if he’d fight. 

He didn’t. He didn’t help, but he didn’t fight. Good enough.

Once both wrists were wrapped in steel, I tightened the chain until his arms were pulled well above his head. I ran my hands along his sides then reached back to squeeze his ass.

“Merlin,” he said. “Please.”

I thought about asking him what he was begging for. Mercy? More? But I suspected he didn’t actually know. I touched his cock and wasn’t surprised to find it half hard. I squeezed and pulled until he was fully erect then kept going as his hips bucked and he finally came. I waited until he had finished, until his body started to relax, then said, “Have you ever tried to see how many times you can come in an hour?” I smeared some of his semen on his face. “We’re children of Amber. We have stamina.”

By the time I’d forced him to come four times in less than half an hour, he was crying, but he hadn’t yet asked me to stop. He only said, “Please,” over and over which made me suspect that he didn’t actually know what he wanted.

Which, in turn, made me feel a little less like maybe I should feel guilty for what I was doing, for what I was going to do.

I stepped back and studied his face. I rather thought I’d over-estimated his stamina. “I should have let you sleep a little longer.”

He gave a choked laugh that was at least half cough and raised his chin. “I can take whatever you can dish out.” He sounded far from confident, but I was pleased that he had that left. It was kind of cute. He flinched when I moved closer and started touching him again.

I put a hand behind his head and held him still so that I could kiss him. I took my time about it.

He leaned into the kiss with something a little like desperation. I wasn’t sure how much of that was him wanting to kiss me and how much was the knowledge that, as long as I was kissing him, I wasn’t doing anything else. He had to remember how much his last time in this room had hurt.

I wanted to press my body against his, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t steady enough to be able to brace himself. I wanted his weight on his feet, not hanging from his wrists.

When I ended the kiss and pulled back, he looked dazed. I touched his cheek, and he leaned into my hand. I ran my fingers over his limp cock, and he whimpered. “I could,” I whispered. “You could.”

“Please,” he said, “don’t.” He didn’t sound like he had much hope that I would listen, but he did sound like he meant it.

“All right,” I said. I stepped back far enough that I could look him up and down. “I won’t always stop when you beg, but this time, yes, I will be kind.” He’d never stopped. I wanted to be a little better than that at least once because I was probably going to be much worse.

He swayed on his feet. I suspected his knees weren’t going to hold him much longer. He still managed to meet my eyes. “So what are you going to do instead?”

I smiled and started to walk around him.

He didn’t turn his head to follow me. He knew that, whatever I was going to do, he couldn’t stop me. But the muscles in his back went tight as I stepped behind him.

I stood there for a moment, just watching him. I wanted very badly to make him scream and then beat him into silence, but I also wanted to take him to the bed, fuck him thoroughly, and then hold him for hours while he slept. I’d kind of liked that part last time. 

I’d probably like myself better if I took him down whether I fucked him or not. I ran a finger along his spine down to the crack of his ass.

He clenched his buttocks.

“It will hurt more if you do that.” I tried to sound like I didn’t care.

He inhaled sharply then exhaled with a shudder. He shifted his weight, and his muscles relaxed enough that I could move my fingers lower. “I thought you wanted it to hurt more.” The words were quiet enough that I almost couldn’t hear them.

I pressed one finger into him. His gasp went straight to my cock. “I don’t mind if it does,” I told him, “but it won’t bother me if it doesn’t, so it’s actually down to what you want. This time.”

He started to laugh. It was wrenching and bitter. “I’m not stupid, Merlin. There’s no way this ends well for me. If I… bore you, I go back into the darkness, don’t I?” He sagged, letting his weight hang from his arms.

“Would you prefer that?” I knew the answer. I pulled my finger out of his ass and reached up to unfasten the manacles on his wrists. I caught him before he fell and lowered him to the floor.

He ended up on his knees, facing away from me, bent forward and supporting his upper body with his hands.

“I want your mouth on my cock,” I told him. “If you work hard, if you please me enough, I’ll give you food now. Otherwise, you wait for morning.”

For a moment, he didn’t move. Then he slowly crawled in a circle until he was facing me. He came up on his knees and crept toward me until he could press his face against my cloth covered crotch.

I put my hands on either side of his head and held it in place while I ground my crotch against his face. “So very eager.” I was more than a little breathless. “You'll have to open my trousers. You can use your hands if you want.”

It seemed like forever before my cock was in his mouth. The warmth, the wetness… I wanted very badly to fuck his mouth, but that wasn’t what I’d told him. I wanted to be that fair. I also wanted to see what he would do.

He licked and sucked, and I couldn’t keep back a groan. He was far from the most skilled cocksucker I’d encountered, by he was obviously trying hard.

“Yes! Like that!” I pulled his head a little closer, forcing him to take me deeper. It took all of my self control not to come right then, and part of me wondered why I was bothering. He wasn’t going anywhere. We could do this as often as I liked. What he liked-- or didn’t-- didn’t matter at all. And that realization sent me over the edge. Everything went white for a few seconds.

When I came back to myself, his face was still pressed into my groin, my cock still in his mouth. I held him there for a moment then pushed him backward onto his ass. I didn’t say anything, just looked down at him. Then I nodded and gave him a genuine smile. “Good enough.”

He relaxed a little and tried to force an answering smile. It didn’t quite work. He looked a lot closer to passing out than I liked. Maybe I shouldn’t have sent him back to the maze when Sibyl declared him recovered. She’d known that I wanted him weak, so he probably had been, even then. But it had only been for two days, and I’d let him sleep five hours after.

I used the Logrus to bring in a glass of fruit juice then went down on one knee and offered it to him. “I really doubt you’ve ever had this before. If you don’t like it, we can try something else.”

He took the glass and drank slowly without ever taking his eyes off of me.

Next, I brought in bread and some dried meat. I gave him a little of each at a time with more juice in between. 

He didn’t look at what I gave him, just ate it. I’m not sure he even tasted it.

“Have you… gone without before?” I wasn’t sure if he knew the safe pace for himself or if I needed to make him wait. His current deliberate slowness might have more to do with putting off what he knew had to come after.

If he didn’t know, he’d learn. My current plan was not more than three days without food and not more than two without sleep. How much of each he’d get at a time would depend on how I judged his condition.

He shrugged and looked away from me for the first time in several minutes. He took several deep breaths then said, “I never realized you were this much of an asshole, Merlin.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “There are things you don’t know about me. You’re not going to enjoy discovering them.”

He flinched minutely, and I realized that his comment had been more bravado than anything else. He chewed on some meat, buying himself some time. 

“I got tired of waiting,” I told him. “I’ve spent a long time not taking what I want because it might upset somebody else. Fuck that noise. I’m not harmless. I’m not safe.”

“No. I suppose not.” He seemed to pull in on himself. “I--”

“You thought I was.” I offered him more juice, but he shook his head. “Everyone thinks that. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.” I bared my teeth at him. “It’s not as if you’re going to tell anyone.” I drained the glass myself then sent it away. “I don’t know what else is going to happen, long term, but I’m keeping you.”

“I let you go.” He didn’t sound like he really thought I was going to buy that. He looked at me again, searching my face for… something. Mercy, perhaps. I don’t think he found it.

“You deceived me. You betrayed me. You tried to kill me. Repeatedly. You imprisoned me. I ran out of food before your mother came. If she hadn’t… Well, I suppose you’d finally have succeeded in killing me. Starving is a shitty way to go.” I wondered if he’d realize that the betrayal cut deepest, that and the not caring enough to make sure I wouldn’t die in that fucking cave. 

I leaned toward him and touched his face very gently. “For all of that… You were… The only reason I didn’t try to seduce you back on earth was that I was afraid someone from Amber would find out and realize that I wasn’t… exactly what they thought I was.” I doubted Luke would understand that deception even if I explained, so I didn’t.

He looked both bewildered and terrified.

I bared my teeth at him again. “You thought that I’d just accept that you had reasons for fucking me over, that I’d forgive you. I don’t. I won’t.” I stood up and turned my back on him. I closed my mouth to keep myself from saying more. I had never had many friends, not friends I trusted. I had trusted him. I had been wrong. But… maybe if he hadn’t beaten me, hadn’t raped me. Maybe if Jasra hadn’t… 

Yes. Well. They both did.

I closed my eyes for a moment and considered sending him back to the maze. He’d suffer, but I wouldn’t be hurting him myself, not the way I wanted to, and I’d probably like myself better. “Get on the bed,” I told him without looking back.

I heard him moving, and I wondered if he’d be stupid enough to try to attack me. “Ghostwheel is watching,” I told Luke softly. “I might have mercy. I’m not sure he does.”

A hiss of indrawn breath told me that Luke had taken my meaning. 

After a moment, I heard him pulling back the blankets. I hadn’t told him to do that, but I also hadn’t told him not to, and it wasn’t as if I needed excuses to hurt him if I wanted to. I cleared my throat. “Face up or face down. I don’t care.” I’d meant to take him this time as he’d mostly taken me-- face down, with false gentleness. As if that would make me forget the bruises and cracked ribs. “Would it be easier for you if I restrain you? I can, but we both know that I don’t have to.”

He took a moment before responding. “I’m not going to fight, but… Would you prefer it for… aesthetic reasons?”

I considered that. Not just him on the bed waiting for me but him on the bed with no illusion of choice, his body held open for whatever I wanted. I started to laugh. “I don’t know anyone else who would have suggested ‘aesthetic reasons’ as part of a rape.” I didn’t like the word, but we both knew that was what I was doing. I finally turned to look at him again.

He lay on his back with his knees bent. He was in the middle of the bed, and he’d pushed the pillows aside so that his head rested on the mattress. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. The rhythm of his breathing told me that he wasn’t nearly as relaxed as he was trying to appear. I’d hurt him more than enough last time for him to know how bad this could be.

I considered making things harder for him. I could, and we both knew it. But, if I pushed too hard, he’d just pass out. When I reached the side of the bed, I reached over and pushed his hair off of his forehead. “You’ll be able to sleep soon.”

He turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut. “Where?”

I sighed and ran a hand over his chest. “I’d intended here, but we can send you back to that cell if you’d rather not share a bed with me.” I wasn’t sure why I was offering the choice. He’d done it once. He could-- certainly would-- do it again.

He didn’t move, but I could see him drawing in on himself. I wondered if he’d be able to make the calculated decision to stay. I hadn’t given him a choice last time. Personal experience told me that sleeping in my arms was the last place he’d want to be but that it was also the wiser course for his long term survival. How many nights had I spent with Jasra?

“I almost feel sorry for you. I would, but then I remember.” I grabbed a pillow and put it under his ass. He helped by lifting his hips enough for the pillow to fit. I stroked his thigh. “You’re going to do more than not fight. You should have had me tie you up.”

He shuddered. “You’re a vicious bastard, Merlin.” He sounded less frightened than I thought he actually was, but his eyes were still tightly shut.

“If you don’t want to look at me, why lie on your back?” I was actually curious.

He opened his eyes and looked at me. “So you have to look at me.” There was a darkness and a burning in his expression that I hadn’t expected. “I don’t want you to forget who you’re raping.”

“I wasn’t going to.” I climbed onto the bed and summoned something to make things easier for both of us. He’d used lube when he fucked me. This time, I’d return the favor. I took a moment to shift my body a little so that I wouldn’t come too soon, not until he was desperate for me to be done. He was already desperate for me to be done. I wondered if I could make him cry again or if he was simply too exhausted.

He kept his eyes fixed on my face. “Do it. Just do it.”

“You can’t afford to hate me, Luke.” I worked a lubed finger into his ass.

“Do you hate me?” He sounded as if that might break his heart.

I didn’t actually believe him. I gave him a smile that I knew looked false. “I’m just giving you what you wanted. Isn’t it fun not to have a choice?”

He turned his face away.

I removed my finger, considered more lube, then decided I didn’t want to be that kind. I pressed my cock into his body and hoped that it hurt. I started fucking him hard and fast. My hands dug into his thighs, and I hoped that hurt, too.

His hands searched for purchase in the sheets and mattress. His body rocked under the force of my movements, and he made sounds that weren’t quite whimpers.

He’d been right, though. Seeing his face made what I was doing harder. It didn’t make me stop, but it did make me remember that I had loved him once, that I maybe still did. He probably thought that the rape went on forever, but it wasn’t even half the time I’d intended. I didn’t even make him bleed.

Eventually, I let myself come and relax on top of him. “I enjoyed that,” I told him. Telling him that seemed more important than actually enjoying it had been.

He was trembling. 

I couldn’t tell if it was fear or exhaustion. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to care. I had no reason to care. “I want to hate you,” I said softly enough that he might not have actually heard. He certainly didn’t respond.

I left him there while I went into the bathroom to clean up. When I came out, I said, “Go wash.”

He did, but he barely made it to the doorway. His legs didn’t seem to want to hold him.

As he staggered past me, I considered helping him, but I rather suspected it wouldn’t be a kindness.

When he emerged, he didn’t look at me at all, just aimed for the bed and collapsed on it.

I climbed into bed beside him and dimmed the lights to a level that would let me sleep. I left some light, however, because I was pretty sure that complete darkness would give Luke screaming nightmares for a while. I pulled him close and made sure the sheets and blankets covered us both.

I expected him to sleep quickly, but he didn’t. He just lay there, nearly rigid but also, somehow, unresisting.

“Nothing else is going to happen now,” I told him, but I wasn’t particularly surprised that he didn’t believe me. I shifted my arms a little so that I could more easily rub his back. I don’t think he noticed that my arms were doing something human arms shouldn’t, or maybe he was beyond caring. “Tomorrow, yes, after breakfast, and from time to time after that.” Probably quite often. I wondered if I’d get bored with him and what I’d do with him after that.

After a few minutes, he relaxed minutely. He shifted a little in my arms, and I suspected he was forcing his exhausted brain to work. He cuddled up against me and sighed. There was wisdom in that. He was trying to manipulate me, of course, but what else could he do?

Maybe I’d do something kind for him tomorrow. Maybe. And maybe not.

Once he fell asleep, I stayed up for a while, watching him and wondering what it was that he’d thought would happen, that he’d wanted to happen. I stayed up longer, looking at the ceiling and wondering what I’d thought would happen.


	6. In which Martin comes to visit and meets Luke.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violence.

Introducing Luke to Martin was a bit of a gamble. I told myself that was why I waited so long to invite Martin to visit, but I knew better. I wasn’t sure that Martin would accept what I had done and was going to do, but I knew that Martin still had nightmares about Brand. Luke wasn’t Brand, but I thought that, maybe, meeting Luke might be cathartic.

And, really, I had missed Martin.

I spent three days showing Martin my Ways and introducing him to my people. I asked him not to tell my mother where to find me, and he agreed. I don’t think he understood how fraught that relationship was, and Dara had been-- possibly still was-- a very close friend. I suppose that was more of a gamble than Luke was. Martin was sure to understand how Luke had betrayed me.

The evening of the third day, we sat in comfortable chairs in front of a fire that never needed more fuel. I had been plying Martin with samples of different alcohols and foods that I’d found and liked enough to figure out how to produce myself. I think he enjoyed it. I think, too, that he understood that I really didn’t have anyone else to share it with.

“You’re not coming back to Amber, are you?” Martin asked after a long silence.

I stared into the fire for a while. “Probably not,” I admitted. “I-- It requires masks that I can’t manage any more. I don’t know when I’ll be able to again or if it’s worth the price. I like most of the family. Kind of. But I don’t love Amber as a thing itself. 

“I’m not going back to the Courts, either. It’s a different set of masks, but…” I waved a hand to indicate everything. “Most people there are still going to see me as a lever against Amber. I’m also… not very civilized right now.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Your people love you. You’ve built a place where they’re safe and where they can produce everything they-- you-- want or need.”

There was more bitterness in my smile than I wanted, and I knew he’d see it. “I’m a god. Loving me is safer than not. What I do-- whatever it may be-- has to be good because I’m a benevolent god.” I sighed. “I could do a lot of terrible shit, and they’d still love me.”

“Are you?” Martin’s tone told me that he was pretty sure I was.

“Not to them and not… I really don’t know how many of them know.” I sipped the drink in my hand. I put the glass down, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths. “Just… one person. There are-- He betrayed me, and there’s more family viciousness in me than I thought there was.” I didn’t specify which family. I got it from both sides.

“If you want absolution--” He shrugged. “I’m not sure I’m the person to ask.”

I laughed softly. “Yeah. None of us are. But…” I looked directly into Martin’s face. “He’s Brand’s son,” I told him, studying his face as I did.

His face went completely blank for a moment. His right hand clenched. “I… see.” He smiled, an expression with sharp edges.

“I thought you might want to meet him.” I was pretty sure we both knew what I was offering. “He has no power here.”

“I have no power here, either.” Martin’s response was just a little harder than I expected. “Should I trust you?”

“I don’t betray first,” I told him. I looked away. “I also… I don’t have many friends. I don’t want to lose any. I’m just not practiced enough to give you power here and not give it to him, too. I’m learning, but I’m not there yet.”

He sighed. “Yeah.” Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. Then he said, “I do want to meet him. Maybe more than that. Maybe not.”

“He killed Caine. He was going to try to kill the rest of us.” I wasn’t sure if Martin had actually liked Caine, but I was pretty sure he was grateful to him for putting an arrow through Brand’s throat. “If that changes anything.”

He inhaled audibly. “I don’t know. Merlin-- Rebma is a kinder place than the Courts. That’s what made me.”

“You don’t have to.” I could understand if he didn’t want to know that about himself. “I wanted to offer, but what works for me might not for you.” I hesitated then added, “It’s an open ended offer. If you don’t and change your mind, you can come back later. Or not. If you do and want to again, you can. Just don’t kill him.” I thought about adding, ‘And don’t try to rescue him,’ but I thought Martin didn’t need me to say that.

He swallowed everything in his glass then set it down hard. “Now?”

“If you like.” I stood up.

He stood, too.

“There aren’t any doors. I can take us with Logrus, or we can ask Ghostwheel.” I didn’t mention that Ghostwheel would be watching, that Ghostwheel was always watching. I wasn’t sure that Martin needed to know that. He might tell his father.

Not that Random didn’t already know. When he’d seen Ghostwheel, he’d suddenly seen me as dangerous. Because he’s a kinder man than most of his brothers, he’d given me a chance to convince him that I wasn’t a threat. But I was, and Ghostwheel and I were collaborating on building other constructs like him. Well, not like him, exactly. We wanted each to have his potential but each to be different. I was looking forward to meeting them.

I wasn’t sure Random would believe that I wasn’t interested in Amber at all. It was true, though. I’d hoped, once, that it could be home, but it wasn’t, so I only cared about it as far as I cared about people who lived there.

Martin chose the Logrus, so I pulled us both to Luke’s rooms.

Luke was doing sit ups. When he saw us, he froze for a second then finished pulling his torso toward his knees. He didn’t bother to lower himself again, just clasped his arms around his knees and waited.

“His parents called him Rinaldo, but he’s Luke now.”

Martin nodded. He didn’t take his eyes off of Luke. “You’ve taken that, too?”

I shook my head. “That’s just who he told me he was.” I could tell that Luke was working very hard not to speak. He had to know that nothing good could come of it. I didn’t think he recognized Martin. Luke wasn’t afraid enough for that.

Or maybe he was completely numb.

I decided to leave it up to Martin whether or not he wanted to introduce himself. “Stand up,” I told Luke.

He did. His eyes went from me to Martin and back again. His breathing was a little faster than it had been.

I walked over and touched Luke’s face, but when I spoke, I was addressing Martin. “Do you want him to strip?” I traced the line of Luke’s chin. “He’ll do whatever you want him to.”

Luke flinched minutely, more at my words than my touch. His eyes went to Martin’s face and stayed there.

I stepped back, very deliberately moving out of the direct line between the other two men.

Martin twitched a hand upward. “Shirt,” he said.

Luke hesitated minutely, but he didn’t take his eyes off of Martin. Luke was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. He’d been working out for a while because there were obvious sweat spots on his shirt. He pulled the shirt off then stood there, holding it in one hand. A few faded bruises still showed on his torso. There were more still hidden by his sweatpants.

Martin glanced at me. “Your work?” The words were carefully bland, non-judgmental.

“He didn’t do it to himself, and no one else could.” Luke had my permission to fight back if the people I sent in for various reasons-- shaving him, changing his sheets, whatever else occurred to me-- tried to hurt him, and I was pretty sure he actually would. There were solutions to all of those tasks that wouldn’t have required letting Luke see people, but I hadn’t forgotten that he needed it.

I didn’t mention Ghostwheel, and I was pretty sure Luke wouldn’t either. Luke was unlikely to speak unless one of us asked him a direct question. “Do you want me here?” I wasn’t even sure that Martin wanted to stay. “I can go and have Ghostwheel listen enough to hear his name when you want to leave or if you… want anything.”

“I don’t expect I’ll want anything.”

I nodded.

“You’re going to watch whether you stay or not.” Martin didn’t even make it a question.

I shrugged. “If I’m not in the room, it’ll still feel more private.” We both knew that I was living in a glass house about six stories high. I wasn’t going to judge. I bit my lip then added softly, “I kind of don’t want to know, but it’ll be safer all around.”

“Thank you for not lying.”

Luke still had his eyes fixed on Martin. He hadn’t moved while we talked or given any indication that he could hear us. I could tell that he was bracing himself, that he knew that this might be very, very bad.

I wasn’t going to tell him that Martin was kinder than I was. Instead, I nodded to Martin and left.

I spent the next twenty minutes watching Martin very methodically beat the shit out of Luke while Luke tried very hard not to fight back or run. He wanted to. I could see that much, but he was more afraid of disobeying me than he was of the beating.

Finally, when Luke was only on his feet because Martin was holding him up, Martin stopped. He let Luke collapse to the floor and stood looking down at him for a few seconds. Then Martin knelt beside Luke. He took Luke’s chin in his hand and forced Luke to look at him.

“Do you know who I am?” Martin asked.

Luke shook his head minutely and mouthed the word ‘no.’

Martin laughed. “Liar.” There was no anger in the word. “I suppose you only guess.”

Luke didn’t look at Martin for a moment. Then he closed his eyes and nodded.

“Good.” Martin let go of Luke’s chin. His fingers moved slowly over Luke’s face, pressing a little harder here and there on obvious bruises. “I’d rather you know. You’re just lucky-- It would make Merlin very unhappy if I stuck a knife into you and left you to bleed out.”

“I would prefer that.” Luke’s words were almost inaudible.

“Then, I suppose you’re unlucky. I think that’s the one thing Merlin’s not going to give you.” Martin’s hand stilled. “Even if I actually felt sorry for you, I value Merlin a hell of a lot more than I value you.”

Luke didn’t answer. I suppose there wasn’t actually anything to say to that.

“Do you remember your father?” Martin’s words were gentle but insistent. He started stroking Luke’s hair.

Luke shuddered, and for a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he whispered, “Yes.”

“And you loved him. He was good to you.”

“Yes.” Luke’s voice was a little stronger.

“How old were you when he died?”

I hadn’t thought to ask that.

“Thirteen.”

“Ah.” Martin let a minute or two go by before he asked another question. He kept stroking Luke’s hair. “How old are you now?”

I hadn’t thought to ask that either. I’d just assumed he was my age.

Luke hesitated. “Forty?” He sounded uncertain. “Fifty? I don’t know.”

Martin made a soothing noise. “It’s not important.”

But it was.

Martin looked up and around the room. He knew I was watching, but he didn’t know from where. After a moment, he sighed and looked down at Luke again.

Martin and I both counted our years in centuries rather than decades. Not many centuries in my case, somewhere between two and three, but still… centuries. I hadn’t thought Luke could be that young. It didn’t really change anything except to make me angrier at Jasra. I hadn’t thought I could be.

Martin didn’t say anything for several minutes. He looked up and around the room again then said, “How did you meet Merlin?”

“Please,” Luke said.

“I know,” Martin told him. “Talking hurts. A lot of things hurt a lot of the time, don’t they? You just have to keep going anyway. Merlin may forgive you. He may not. There’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it.”

Luke made a small noise that might have been agreement or might have been protest.

Martin stroked Luke’s throat. There weren’t any bruises there. Martin had been very careful about any blows above Luke’s shoulders, and he hadn’t wanted to risk crushing Luke’s throat. He’d pulled his blows to the head, too. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me.”

Luke shuddered, but a few seconds later, he started to talk. It wasn’t anything I didn’t know. I wasn’t even surprised to hear him say that he’d genuinely liked me. But I found myself wondering how old he’d been then. Old enough to know what he was doing?

I could see from Martin’s expression that he understood why I felt betrayed. He knew how rare friendship had been in my life, and it was obvious from Luke’s words that I’d loved him. Luke didn’t seem to understand it, but I didn’t see any way that Martin could miss it.

Martin drew Luke on to talk about things he’d done when he wasn’t with me. Luke talked about a place called Kashfa and a girl named Coral, about finding the blue cave, about the time he’d taken to figure out how to kill Caine without dying himself. He talked, too, about allying with an uncle I’d never heard of, someone named Dalt. Martin seemed to recognize the name, and he frowned. 

The main thing I got from the narrative was that Luke had been really fucking young when I met him.

Luke stumbled to a stop when it came time to talk about imprisoning me in the blue cave. I think he thought that was the true betrayal, that rather than everything that came before. He was largely incoherent on the subject of me nearly starving to death. For the first time, however, I almost believed that he really had miscalculated the time. I wasn’t ready to forgive him for it. If I hadn’t been starved beyond being able to control my body, Jasra would never have captured me. She’d never have gotten those damned cuffs on me.

Luke had his eyes shut, so he missed the appalled look on Martin’s face when he mentioned the twins and how Martin's expression hardened when Luke admitted that he and his mother had both hurt me while I was helpless. Martin might not be certain what Luke ‘hurting’ me had involved, but he was pretty damned clear about what Jasra had done. I didn’t think that the fact that she hadn’t physically hurt me would matter to him. I was pretty sure, too, that he guessed how thin the thread was that had kept me alive.

Luke mentioning Jurt surprised Martin for a moment, but Martin knew how Jurt and I failed to get along. I think, too, that he thought about how some of our relatives would have reacted to seeing each other in the same situation. 

Martin had no idea who Julia was and made Luke explain. I really didn’t want to hear that part. I hadn’t quite managed to numb myself to that particular horror.

Neither Martin’s voice nor his hands gave Luke any hint of what Martin was thinking. Martin spoke soothingly, drawing Luke on. I’d never have had the control for that, and I wondered if it was something I’d learn with age or if it was simply a difference in our temperaments.

Martin looked up again when Luke talked about letting me go. He was pretty damned vague about the bit right before that, and I was just as happy for Martin not to know. He might guess, but he didn’t know. 

Luke also wasn’t very clear about why he let me go. I think he wasn’t entirely sure of it himself. I got the impression that he thought that his mother had finally decided to kill me and that he hadn’t been willing to let that happen. Which may have been about wanting me alive and may have been wondering what Ghostwheel would do if Jasra murdered me. Luke had had months to decide to let me go. Obviously, he’d enjoyed what he was doing to me too much for that.

I’m pretty sure that Luke had realized that Ghostwheel didn’t understand what Luke and Jasra were doing to me. My death would be something Ghostwheel couldn’t possibly misinterpret.

Luke actually admitted to having fantasies about me kidnapping him, to excitement at being helpless to stop me, even now, even in the face of reality. He cried then. I think the only reason he didn’t cling to Martin was that moving hurt too much. He admitted that being in my power was both horrible-- beyond horrible-- and something of a relief. The choices I gave him were simple, and he had no power to do anything beyond the walls of his prison. He no longer had to try to take down his father’s entire family unassisted.

Luke was so very, very fucking young.

And Martin wasn’t even a little bit kinder than I was. He left Luke on the floor and came and held me while I cried.


	7. In which Merlin has breakfast with Martin and Mandor

Mandor was there when I woke up which meant Martin must have talked Ghostwheel into letting him in. I wouldn’t have agreed to have him come, but I was actually kind of glad to see him. Mandor had been a steady, reliable presence in my life for as long as I could remember. I just hadn’t been able to ask him for help because I wanted to think I didn’t need that any more and because I couldn’t-- really, really couldn’t-- tell him what had happened. 

I didn’t ask what Martin had told Mandor. I just sat down and called for a meal for myself. 

The other two accepted beverages but said they’d eaten.

I couldn’t meet Mandor’s eyes. I knew what Martin knew and that he didn’t think less of me, but Martin was my friend. Mandor… wasn’t.

Mandor talked lightly, mostly gossip from the Courts, while I was eating. He didn’t mention mother or Despil or Jurt, though, and I’d have expected him to talk more about them since I might be assumed to care more about them. He also didn’t seem to expect me to have anything to say which wasn’t usual for him. Usually, he expected me to analyze the gossip and tell him what I thought was really going on behind it.

I could have answered, actually. Ghostwheel and I knew a lot about the Courts at that point. But I stayed silent and instead wondered when they’d get to the point and tell me what was going on.

When I laid down my napkin, Martin said, “Ghostwheel has given us a clear map. What he can’t tell us is if there are any people you don’t want to die.”

I wasn’t sure what my face did, but both of them were studying me. They were expecting something from me. My stomach knotted, and I really regretted my meal. I really didn’t want to think about my time in Jasra’s keep.

After a long, heavy silence, I said, “There was one woman, but I think she’s probably dead. Actually, I hope she is because… They were very, very angry. She got one of the cuffs off of me before they caught us.” I’d been so close to escaping. I’d really lost hope after that. I’d also felt damned guilty because I’d very carefully persuaded her to help me. It had taken weeks. 

Jasra hadn’t punished me at all, but Melina had disappeared, and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to try again.

Martin met my eyes. “Draw us a picture. She might not be.” 

I looked down at the table. “The children…” I didn’t think that either Martin or Mandor included my son and daughter among the people to be killed. I just wasn’t sure what to do with them. I adored them both, but I didn’t think I could deal with what they represented, not yet. I looked at Mandor, and I think my desperation showed. “They can’t go to Amber.” Amber was too careless with its children.

“Merlin.” Mandor managed a world of reassurance in a single word. “Ghostwheel says they’re not two yet. They won’t remember. Sawall will keep them safe.” He smiled faintly. “Your mother has been wanting more children.” His smile vanished. “We won’t tell her any more than we must.” His voice became iron. “I will deal with Jurt.”

I nodded. I hesitated then realized I wouldn’t get a better chance. “Ghostwheel…”

“Yes?”

I swallowed and forced myself to speak. “Ghostwheel is my son, too. I don’t think Sawall or Amber matter to him, but he’s mine, and I want that respected.” I didn’t quite look at Martin. He almost certainly would tell Random that. “All children are dangerous.” I hoped Martin would tell Random that as well.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

Then Martin said, “I’d wondered.”

Mandor said, “I can't speak for your mother, but I will welcome your children. All three.”

I relaxed a little. “I don’t think she knew to keep him from taking the children,” I felt I had to admit that. “I-- We could have. I just… I thought she’d take good care of them.” But she had set Luke to get close to me and kill me when he was, what, twenty? I didn’t see how he could have been more than twenty five, and really, that wasn’t any better than twenty.

“That would be simpler than invading,” Martin admitted, “but I think leaving one stone atop another sets a bad precedent.”

Mandor smiled. “Not a precedent I would approve.” He looked at Martin, and he looked at me. “I think the three-- four-- of us should be sufficient given that getting in will be easy.”

“I think you'd better get the children out,” Martin told me. “I will hunt Jasra. Ghostwheel can look for your friend. Mandor can pull the building down.” He looked at his hands for a moment. “She was his wife. She had to know what he was going to do.”

I wouldn't have been surprised if Jasra had been the one to point out Martin's vulnerability and the fact that no one would even notice he was gone. But I also didn’t think that was why Martin was going to kill Jasra. Well, not the only reason. I decided then that I would never ask Martin how long Jasra took to die. “There's power there. In the keep, I mean. I'm not sure what happens if we pull things down on top of it. Or touch it with the Logrus.”

“Trust me,” Mandor said in a tone that told me I was teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.

I flushed a little and stared at my hands. I was pretty sure they were sending me after the children to keep me from freezing at familiar places or faces. I’d learned how to be helpless there, but the children were important enough to keep me moving. We all knew there had to be reasons I hadn’t touched anyone in the keep before. It certainly wasn’t because I couldn’t get in and out again easily. “I’m sorry,” I said, and we all knew it wasn’t for anything in the current conversation.

“Merlin--” Mandor’s voice was insistent. “Merlin, trust me. I know this. You survive, and you go on. You find the sharp edges and the cracks, and you compensate. You’re never the same, but which of us is the same from one year to the next? It’s just… a more abrupt way to change.”

I thought about Luke. “I’m not sure I like myself right now,” I admitted. I was pretty sure Martin would understand that. Mandor… Mandor had done worse without ever letting his smile slip. Mandor would probably think I hadn’t hurt Luke enough. I doubted Mandor would understand wanting to keep Luke for any reason except revenge or very fleeting amusement.

I wasn’t Mandor.

I looked at Martin. He frowned at me then sighed. “You can’t let him go. Not if his mother is alive and definitely not if we kill her.” His expression went hard just long enough to tell me that not killing Jasra wasn’t an option he’d consider.

I wondered if it would make sense to imprison Jasra here, instead. My stomach turned. Jasra was an enemy. Luke was… something else. I didn’t want her anywhere near me, prisoner or free. I still wanted Luke.

And I’d feel so much better when Jasra was dead.

“I know.” I did. “I just…” I shook my head. “I should check on the son of a bitch and make sure he’s not dying.” I stood.

Neither Martin nor Mandor gave any indication of having an opinion on the subject, and I was grateful for that mercy.


	8. In which Merlin puts Luke to bed and discusses choices with Ghostwheel

Luke had gotten himself up, at least to a point. He sat where Martin had left him instead of lying on the floor. His eyes were open, and I knew he was aware because he flinched when he saw me and tried to pull his legs under him to get up.

“Not on my account,” I told him. “I think you’ve had enough for now.”

The relief in his posture spoke louder than words. There was a point beyond which I hadn’t abused him, but we both knew that I could. He didn’t trust my self-restraint. I didn’t entirely, either.

And we both knew that I wouldn’t have stopped Martin if he’d gone further than I would.

I went down on one knee next to him. “Ribs?”

“Probably.” He had to work to get the word out. “Seeing double, too.” He coughed then went stiff with the pain.

I considered. There really hadn’t been any chance Luke wouldn’t be concussed, pulled punches or not. “At least you didn’t throw up.” I inhaled, testing the air. Yes, he’d probably lost bladder control. Or given it up on the assumption that we were going to leave him on the floor until he could stand on his own. If it was going to happen eventually anyway, he might as well let it happen as soon as he needed it to. It didn’t smell like he’d shit himself. If he had, I’d have dealt with it, but I was just as happy not to need to.

I got him off the floor and into the bathroom without much in the way of help from him. He didn’t try to hide how much moving hurt, how much being touched hurt. I peeled his sweatpants off of him and ran water over him.

Martin hadn’t touched Luke below the waist. I’d known that. I’d seen that. I hadn’t actually registered that. There was a huge contrast between the bruising on Luke’s face and torso and the mostly unmarked skin of his lower body. If he’d been able to get to his feet, he could have walked. Probably. If the concussion didn’t make him too dizzy.

“Would you really rather a knife in the gut?”

His eyes weren’t quite focused, but he more or less looked at me. “You’re not giving me that,” he said. There was grief there.

“I can’t,” I admitted. “Maybe if I’d only ever hated you.” I pulled in some fruit juice and held it to his lips so that he could drink. I considered food, but I didn’t want to spoon feed him. Not that I hadn’t from time to time. I just didn’t want to then.

He didn’t ask me to.

“I’m going to wrap your ribs,” I told him after I’d washed and dried him. “You’ll have to raise your arms and sit up.”

He looked at me like I was crazy.

“We both know I can force you.” I hesitated. “Would that be easier?”

He stared at me like I was speaking a language he didn’t know. Then he closed his eyes and nodded.

“Right,” I said. I put my hands under his arms and lifted.

That drew a sharp cry of pain from him, but he ended up on his feet, swaying enough that I wasn’t sure how long he’d stay there if I stopped holding him, but still on his feet. 

I forced his arms up, higher than they’d have had to be if he could hold them himself. 

He screamed, and his knees gave out.

I’d kind of expected that, so I held him up while I wrapped a Logrus tendril around his wrists. At that point, I let the tendril and his wrists support his weight while I stepped back. The additional damage was likely to be minor.

“It’s just for a minute,” I said, more to reassure myself than to reassure him. I was pretty sure he was beyond hearing me.

The bandage had a little magic, just enough to adjust to his shape and to tighten itself in the places where he actually needed support. The way it moved as it went on told me that he did, in fact, need it badly, that I wasn’t torturing him needlessly.

Not that I had never done that. Not that anyone, including him, would say anything if I did.

And I probably could have designed the bandage so that he wouldn’t have to raise his arms, so I suppose it was needless. He probably knew it, too.

He sobbed into my shoulder when I caught him after releasing his arms. He pressed his face against me, and I held him for a moment, making soothing noises. Then I lifted him as gently as I could and carried him over to the bed.

I wasn’t feeling quite kind enough to try to get him under the blankets, but I did summon a hypodermic containing something that would ease his pain enough that he could sleep. I could have-- should have-- done that before I wrapped his ribs, before I got him off the floor and into the bathroom, even. It just hadn’t occurred to me. I didn’t allow him anything for pain very often.

When he saw the hypodermic, his eyes went wide, and he made a desperate sound of protest. Hypodermics usually meant very, very bad things for him.

“It’s just something for pain,” I informed him. I didn’t ever lie to him, but I’m not sure he believed me, and we both knew it didn’t matter.

I sat on the bed beside him and waited for him to sleep. He fought it for a few minutes. I’d never harmed him while he slept, but he never seemed to lose the fear that I would. Perhaps it was because we’d kidnapped him originally while he slept. Or perhaps it was because I nearly always pulled him out of the neutral cell while he slept. Either would remove any sense of safety in sleep.

When his breathing settled, I said, “Ghostwheel?”

“Yes?” He’d been there the whole time, but now he let himself become large enough to be visible.

“If something happens that I don’t come back, this time or whenever, move him out into the main Ways. Don’t let him leave the Ways, but let him be with people.”

“Do you think you won’t come back?” Ghostwheel actually sounded a little worried.

“This time? The odds are entirely in our favor, but people do die. I don’t know if you will or how that would work, but I might.” I blinked then rubbed my face. “I might-- Jasra’s not the only one who might imprison me.”

“Jasra only happened because I wasn’t watching.” He hesitated. “And some later because I didn’t understand. I’m sorry for that.”

I looked at my hands and was pleased that they weren’t shaking. “I hadn’t taught you… that.” I had thought, while I was still a prisoner, that Ghostwheel did understand and had made the choice to leave me where I was. I glanced at Luke. “Does it bother you? This, I mean?” I waved a hand to indicate the entire room. “I’m probably going to destroy him, and he was kind of your friend. More honestly than he was mine.”

Ghostwheel didn’t say anything for a very long time, and I wondered if I’d posed him a question he couldn’t answer. “I had to chose,” he said at last, “and you’re my father. And… he wanted me to kill people.”

“There’s no guarantee I won’t.” He’d helped me to kill, but I’d always made sure I did the actual deed. There wasn’t really much difference since I couldn’t do it without him, but having him do it himself was a line I didn’t want to cross.

Ghostwheel didn’t answer that. “He wanted you, wanted this.”

I shook my head. “He wanted some fantasy in his head about what this would be like. I don’t think much of this has been like what he imagined.” I sighed then added softly, “Do you really think he wants any of this now?”

“He hasn’t asked me to let him out.”

I considered that. “I don’t think that-- A lot of people don’t realize that you can make choices. He thought that, if I was out of the way, you’d let him make your choices, and he thinks, now, that I’m making all the choices.” I inhaled and held it for a moment. “You could. It would be… unsafe for some people I care about.” For me, too, but I wasn’t going to point that out. “But, even if I could, I wouldn’t tell you what to do. You have to make that decision yourself.”

“I-- I don’t want to.” There was pain in that, and it broke my heart.

I wished that I could hug Ghostwheel. I was asking something very hard of him. I could let him off, take the responsibility, take the pain, but I didn’t think that would be right. I raised a hand to reach toward his image. “It’s part of growing up,” I told him gently. “You can put it off for a while, but… I’m not going to tell you who to become, how to be. I’d be a terrible parent if I did.” I’d be Jasra.

I lowered my arm and waited.

Ghostwheel didn’t say anything. He didn’t leave, though.

I broke the silence. “I didn’t know, when I created you, that I was making a person. I’m not sure what I’d have done differently because I’m not sure I’d have had any idea what I was doing.” I was getting tangled up in my words. “I’m sorry for that. I’m not sorry for you being you and everything, but I wish I’d done better.”

“Should I-- Should I hurt him, too? Like you and Martin?”

I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to tell Ghostwheel that that would hurt him, too, not just Luke. “Do you want to?”

“No? But should I?” He sounded so terribly uncertain.

“Not wanting to is fine,” I said firmly. “If you want… In eight or so hours, if he’s awake and hurting, you can give him something for it. If you want to. And after that… Just he could kill himself with too much all at once.” It would take a hell of a lot. Luke was tougher than I was at this point, and he generally recovered faster.

“And you want me not let him?”

“I want you to know that it’s possible. Whether or not you give him the option is up to you.” I didn’t want to lose Luke, but I had to let Ghostwheel choose.

“You told Martin not to kill him.”

Martin wouldn’t have done it for mercy. I wasn’t sure I could explain that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to explain that. “That was different. Luke was never Martin’s friend.”


	9. In which Martin brings Merlin a gift

Martin brought me Jasra’s head. He tossed it onto the floor in front of me and said, “I thought it might help if you were sure.” He looked like he’d been Hellriding for days, and I was pretty sure some of the stains on his clothing were his blood rather than Jasra’s.

I stared at Jasra’s face and tried to work out how I felt. I wasn’t sure I felt anything at all and hadn’t since I sent my children away with Mandor. “Thank you.” I tried to put some sort of emotion into the words and couldn’t quite.

“Will he need the proof?”

No need to ask who ‘he’ was. “I hadn’t planned to tell him.” I made myself meet Martin’s eyes and tried to come up with an explanation that Martin would accept.

“Ah.” Martin dropped into a chair, and I wondered how hard it would be to clean the fabric after. He studied me for a moment. “Ghostwheel tells me all went well.” It was almost a question.

I looked away. Ghostwheel hadn’t found Melina. “I got the children out. Their things, too.” Packed by a nursery maid who knew she was buying her life in doing it. I tried to find something interesting in the patch of wall I was looking at. “I changed their names. They’re young enough they won’t remember.” They were Clayre and Gramble now. Perfectly unexceptional names. Nothing anyone would question. Mandor had even been pleased.

I could hear Martin very loudly not saying anything.

“I’m really very fucked up, aren’t I?”

“Moderately.” I could hear a smile in Martin’s voice. “If what you’re doing now works, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, well, we have a lot of options for something different.”

“I think… I feel better, safer really, knowing that I can… hurt him.” Did knowing I could require actually doing it? I was never going to forget that I had or that I’d enjoyed it. Probably still would enjoy it if I was being honest. But I hadn’t needed to hurt anyone else to prove that I was safe and powerful. “I didn’t want to know that I’m a sadist.”

“If you’ve gotten what you need from him, you could just kill him. It would simplify a lot of things.”

I felt the beginnings of anger and turned to stare at Martin. Looking at his face, though, I realized that he knew I couldn’t. Not then, maybe not ever, not even to be merciful. I shook my head.

Martin stood, crossed the room, and touched my face. “Would it help to have someone else do it? I will if you ever want. Only if you want.”

I leaned my head into his hand for a moment then pulled away. “I never wanted anyone to see me vulnerable.”

Martin met my eyes, and I could tell that he was thinking that, if that was true, I’d never have introduced him to Luke or, at least, would have kept him from interrogating Luke. And Martin was right. He was wrong, too, because I hadn’t done it deliberately.

“You didn’t beat him for revenge.”

Martin turned away. “I might have. I wanted to.” He sighed. “But he’d hurt you, and I needed to know how. It didn’t seem like…” He shrugged. “There were parts of you missing.”

“I don’t think I’m getting those back.” I didn’t manage to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

“Have you trusted anyone, really trusted them-- apart from Ghostwheel-- since--? Since.” 

Neither of us were going to name what had been done to me. He thought it might hurt me, and I knew it would.

I considered his question. “You and Mandor.” None of the Shadowdwellers I’d taken as lovers counted. Not one of them could have hurt me.

“I have no power here,” he said softly. “Would you have invited me in if I did?”

That felt like being stabbed because he was right.

“And you never invited Mandor in.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me. I know that. You wouldn’t.”

Martin shook his head. “Mandor… We both know that you can only trust him in certain things. He might not hurt you, not intentionally, but he’d use you. So would Dara.”

“You wouldn’t.” I could hear the almost pleading in my voice.

He sighed. “There isn’t actually anything I want. I think we both know that one. It’s not a problem our fathers ever had. I think… Oberon tried to hook us both, us and Dara, but he never quite understood what made any of us.”

“I think… Oberon never saw me as separate from my parents. I wonder… I think he kept his children on a short leash so that he’d know who they were. I think he kept them children.” Talking about Oberon was a hell of a lot easier than talking about Luke.

“Benedict escaped and Corwin. And a few others who no one ever talks about who just vanished into Shadow and never came back.”

“Corwin… got lost and found himself. At least, he did if anything he told me was actually true.”

Martin laughed briefly then shook his head. “I find it interesting how quickly all of them changed when Oberon disappeared for a few decades. That’s why I think it was deliberate on his part.”

I couldn’t help looking at Jasra’s head. “All except Clarissa’s children.”

His shoulders sagged a little. “Yes. Except for them.” He cleared his throat. “I’m willing to stay for a while if I can… be useful at all. Unless you don’t want me here?”

Did I? “You trust me for that?”

“Actually, yes.” He smiled at me. “And this is not an unpleasant place.”

“Ghostwheel thinks he knows where Corwin is.” I was afraid to continue that line of conversation, so I changed the subject. “I just-- He thinks mother has him, has had him for a very long time.” Would she treat him any better than I treated Luke? I suspected the situations were more similar than I liked. “I can’t leave him there, but I can’t--” I shook my head.

“Either way, you betray one of them.”

“I told Mandor that I want him back. I… don’t know if he’ll tell Mother.” 

Mandor had nodded an acknowledgement of my words that I took as confirmation that Corwin was, in fact, somewhere in our Ways. Sawall’s Ways. I don’t know that I could call them mine any more.

“If she’s not trying to talk to you about it, he hasn’t told her.”

I could hear the ‘yet’ that he didn’t add to the sentence. “Would she, as a favor to you?”

He didn’t answer for quite a while. Then he shrugged. “Maybe. It might depend on what I can give her.” He looked directly at me for a second then away. “I liked Corwin, what I saw of him, but there’s not a hell of a lot your mother wants, either.”

Ah. The price was too high. I looked at my hands. “It’s been a very long time. Maybe she doesn’t actually want him any more?”

“How long will it be before you’re ready to give Luke to someone else?”

Neither of us said anything else for more than a minute.

“I… might consider giving him to you.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Martin said, “because you know I’d kill him. Keeping him alive is really fucking dangerous. You’re not considering the risk. You can’t.”

I clenched my hands until my fingernails dug into my flesh. I took a deep breath. He was right, and we both knew it. “I can’t,” I admitted.

“The rest of his life is a long time.”

I knew that. Luke knew that. Maybe Ghostwheel didn’t because he measured time differently, but Luke and I both knew. “I still want it.” The words were barely a whisper. 

“I know.” Martin sounded tired.

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at me sharply. “No. Don’t be. If hurting him helps, if fucking him-- You are, aren’t you? --helps, then do it.”

“I don’t know… I’m not sure it helps. It did. It definitely did. Now… I think I just enjoy it.” Part of me was horrified to admit that, but part of me knew that it was something I needed to say. “And it’s him. I don’t have any interest in doing that sort of thing to anyone else. I could; any of us could. Are we just not that kind of predator or is it something everyone does and nobody told me?”

“I think… It’s usually not family, so it ends fast.” Martin sighed. “Normal people are so very, very fragile.”

I narrowed my eyes. What he said was almost true. “If I was just generically interested in torturing people-- as a hobby, I guess-- I could absolutely find people in Shadow who could survive it.”

He flicked his fingers in acknowledgment of my point. He finally dropped into a chair again and started pulling off his boots. “I think-- I suspect-- that Oberon did and then made sure that his children didn’t. I think he came very close to… disposing of my father over-- Well, yes. Most of us don’t have pretty stories about where we came from.”

I considered Oberon because I didn’t want to look at the other half of what Martin had said. “Why would he care what anybody did out in Shadow?”

“From things he said, I think he thought that the ‘good’ children were more likely to be loyal.”

Martin knew more about Oberon than I did, so I shrugged. “Didn’t work out so well, did it?”

Martin looked at the boot he’d just pulled off rather than at me. Then he hurled it across the room. “Better than I’d have predicted, actually. My guess is that Clarissa taught her three to hide anything Oberon might not like. Which probably indicates she was the same sort of monster he was.”

Clarissa-- The name felt like being stabbed. No. That wasn’t my daughter’s name any longer. I forced myself to focus on the content of Martin’s words. “Are Bleys and Fiona--? Do they--?”

“Shadow is very, very big. I haven’t looked.” The look on his face told me that he didn’t plan to, either. “It wouldn’t change anything. Not a single damned thing.”

I had to agree. “So what do you think I should do with him? Given that I won’t-- can’t-- kill him.”

Martin looked at me for a long moment. “You might ask yourself why you don’t want to show him that.” He nodded at Jasra’s head on the hearthrug.

Oh. Yes. That. It would hurt Luke beyond anything else I’d done or likely could do. I licked my lips. “It would-- It would distract him.” I looked away. “I’m not sure he remembers there’s anything real out here, and there’d be no getting away from that.”

“How long has it been? From his point of view.”

“I haven’t given him any way to track time.” Which we both knew was avoiding the question. “He’s afraid of the dark now.” With good reason. “So I don’t dim the lights unless I’m sleeping there with him.”

“How long, Merlin?”

“A year. Maybe two.” It had been three, and the first six months, Luke had spent most of his time in the dark and cold with no clothes, no food, and very little water. He knew very well how much better things were now.

I’m not sure Martin believed me. Whether he thought it had been a longer time or a shorter, I have no idea. “When will it be enough?” Martin asked softly. “Are you going to stay here, with him, forever?”

I managed to laugh. “Two or three years isn’t all that long, not with our lifespan. I’m sure I’ll get tired of him eventually.” And then what would I do with him?

Martin answered my laugh. “I suppose I shouldn’t actually worry until it’s been a decade, at least.” But he was worried. I could tell that much.

“Are you… going to want to see him again?” I wasn’t sure what I hoped for there. Part of me wanted Martin to be better than me, and part of me wanted… something else. I took a deep breath and tried to push away the idea of playing with Luke together.

“Is that something you want?” From his tone, I was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

I fixed my eyes on Jasra’s head. “It might help. Help me, not him. I need… the reminder.” I wasn’t willing to say the reminder of what, mostly because I wasn’t sure. There were so many options.

“Okay.” He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “Can it wait a day or two?”

“I suppose.” Luke wasn’t going anywhere, and I’d left him alone for longer than this before. After a certain point, he was always more worried that I wouldn’t come than that I would.


	10. In which Merlin and Martin spend time with Luke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explicit. Non-con.

This time, Luke was sitting in a chair, reading a book. He hesitated for the briefest moment, then marked his place and set the book down. He slipped off the chair and onto his knees. He looked at me and then at Martin and then at the suddenly fascinating carpet.

Martin strolled around the room. He didn’t give Luke even the most cursory attention. Instead he noted all of the ways we could restrain Luke.

“It’s more aesthetics than anything,” I told Martin. “Luke’s very good about staying where I put him as long as it’s physically possible, and you saw the other day that he doesn’t fight or run.” Sometimes, restraints let Luke pretend that he actually might fight, that he had to be forced to cooperate. Sometimes, I let him.

Martin smiled at me. There were shadows enough in his eyes that I knew he understood. He walked over and put a hand on Luke’s head. He gripped Luke’s hair and pulled his head up and back to force Luke to look at him. He ran a finger along Luke’s jawline. “I’m surprised he doesn’t hate you.”

I surprised myself by feeling sad. I turned my back on them. “He’s too broken for that.” I hadn’t admitted that before. “I don’t think… If there was a door, I don’t think he could use it.”

“Could you?” Martin’s voice was gentle as he asked Luke the question.

Luke didn’t answer. I’m sure it was because he didn’t know what we wanted to hear. He may also have thought that Martin and I wanted different answers.

After a few seconds, Martin said, “Is he at least a good fuck?”

“He tries very hard.” I wasn’t willing to praise Luke beyond that. “If you want to try him, though, feel free.” I was pretty sure I wasn’t telling Luke anything he hadn’t guessed.

When I turned back to look at them, I realized that Luke had relaxed a little. He was still terrified, but he was less terrified than he had been. He’d realized that Martin probably wasn’t going to beat him again.

“Luke,” I said very gently. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

Luke’s breath hissed through his clenched teeth. He didn’t move. Had he, he’d have had to pull himself out of Martin’s grip. There wasn’t a way Luke could win. There was never any way Luke could win.

Martin’s eyes were on me. “On the bed or hanging from the ceiling?”

I licked my lips. “It’s easier on the bed, but he’s prettier hanging from the ceiling.”

“The ceiling then. We can move him later.” Martin released his grip on Luke’s hair and stepped back.

Luke stood immediately and started to strip. He didn’t look at either of us. As Luke undressed, Martin ran his hands over Luke’s exposed skin. Luke shuddered in response.

When Luke was naked, I stepped in close on the opposite side of him from Martin.

Without prompting, Luke turned his head so that I could kiss him.

I took my time about it. I put a hand on the back of his head, not so that he couldn’t pull away-- I knew he wouldn’t-- but so that he’d know he couldn’t. He made a sound that I suspected would have been, “Please,” if he’d been able to speak. I reached down to touch his exposed genitals. As I expected, he hardened quickly.

I didn’t expect to feel him shake and to realize that he was crying. I hadn’t hurt him yet. Then I realized. There was enough of Luke left to be ashamed to have Martin see him get hard at the prospect of rape and pain.

I stopped kissing him and studied his face. “I want this,” I told him as gently as I could manage. I brushed fingers over his cheek then rubbed the wetness between them. “You don’t get a choice.”

Luke sagged a little. “The prisoner never gets a choice,” he whispered.

“You taught me that.” 

He had. He remembered, too. He closed his eyes. “Merlin--” There was enough pain in that for me to want to beat him until he screamed and for me to want to take him to bed and hold him while he cried. I expect he knew that, too. If Martin hadn’t been there, Luke probably would have tried to persuade me toward holding him. He might even have succeeded. Sometimes, I wanted to like myself.

I looked at Martin. “Used to be, he could sell anybody anything.”

I couldn’t read Martin’s expression. “You let him use your name?” He sounded surprised but he didn’t look it.

“There’s a limit to how much groveling I want.” And it served as a reminder of who Luke had been to me. I wasn’t at all sure I could explain that part to Martin.

Martin gave me a look that said plainly that we were going to talk, later, about just how fucked up this was. He glanced upward, and I realized he was wondering when I would lower the manacles.

I hesitated. Luke still had his eyes closed, so I let some of that show on my face. I ran a finger over Luke’s lips. “He’s gotten very good at sucking my cock,” I told Martin. “I don’t know if the skill generalizes, but sometimes, it’s nice to take a little bit of the edge off before we start playing.”

Luke seemed to be holding his breath.

Martin ran his hands over Luke’s back and down to his ass then squeezed. “I’m curious,” he said.

I noted that he hadn’t specified what about, but I don’t think Luke noticed.

Luke dropped to his knees and looked up at me, waiting for instructions.

“Martin first,” I told him. “He’s my friend.”

Luke flinched, and I realized that that word generally signaled that things would be very bad indeed.

I didn’t reassure him. I wasn’t actually sure how bad it would be.

Martin opened his trousers and sat in one of the two chairs.

Luke crawled over and took Martin’s cock in his mouth. I couldn’t see exactly what Luke was doing, but judging by Martin’s expression, he was doing very well indeed.

I wondered how long Martin would make Luke wait, how hard he would make him work.

Martin dug his fingers into Luke hair.

I could see a little panic in the curve of Luke’s back as he pushed himself forward, taking Martin in deep. He knew that Martin could hurt him, and he was afraid that, if Luke wasn’t eager enough, Martin would.

It wasn’t until Martin bit his lip to hold back a groan that I realized that part of Luke’s problem was that he was used to me talking to him while he blew me. That generally gave him some warning about what would happen next.

I sat in the other chair and waited for Martin to finish. It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected, but I remembered, after a moment, that he didn’t have shapeshifting to help him draw things out further.

Luke kept his face pressed into Martin’s crotch until Martin nudged him backwards. Luke looked up at Martin’s face and waited.

Martin hooked fingers under Luke’s chin. “Adequate,” he said. He gave Luke a smile that said that he was pleased.

I wondered what Luke’s face looked like.

After a moment, Martin nudged Luke with his foot, and Luke crawled in my direction.

I let him blow me without doing anything to make it harder for him. I just stroked his head and murmured a few times that he was being good. When I was done, I ran a hand over Luke’s back and looked at Martin. “Do you want him again?”

Martin didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched me with Luke. “Not right now.”

I nodded. I knew that Martin had a pretty good idea what I normally did to Luke, but somehow, right then, I didn’t want him to see me do it, so I kept rubbing Luke’s back for a minute or two, as he pressed his face against my thigh. I took a couple of deep breaths. “I want to do something thoroughly terrible,” I told them both.

Luke went very still.

I didn’t stop rubbing his back.

“But you also don’t.” Martin regarded me levelly. 

“I don’t know what I want,” I admitted. “He’s beautiful, and I love the sounds he makes when he’s frightened, when I hurt him. I don’t think anything’s going to stop me fucking him if I have the option.”

Martin raised a hand. “I’m not saying you should. I’m not saying that what you’re doing doesn’t work. For you, anyway. Except… You’re not actually happy.” His expression told me he was sure I wouldn’t have invited him in if I’d been happy. He might have been right.

“I don’t think killing him would make me happier.”

“I know.” Martin offered me a sympathetic smile. “And he doesn’t-- quite-- want to die. Has he even tried?”

I shook my head.

“When was the last time he fought you?”

Never. “If we’re having this conversation, I don’t want him here.”

I felt Luke’s sudden spike of panic even before he pulled away from me.

“Please. No. Please. Please, Merlin, don’t.” Luke fixed his eyes on my face. There was utter desperation in his voice and posture. He didn’t look like he expected me to listen, more like he was terrified enough that he just couldn’t stay silent.

His fear was poisonously sweet, and I wondered what else he would do. For a moment, I forgot Martin was there. “If I want it…” I leaned toward Luke, tilted his face a little, and kissed him deeply.

He pressed himself into the kiss as if that might change my mind.

When I pulled back, I stroked his cheek. “It’s been months. I thought maybe you’d forgotten.” I knew better. He’d never forget the maze. “As it happens, Luke, that’s not actually what I had in mind. Just the other cell. I’ll give you a blanket, too.”

He almost collapsed in relief. He turned to nuzzle my hand.

“I didn’t think anything would scare him that much,” Martin said softly.

I looked at Martin. “One thing,” I said. “Well, one thing out of the things I’m actually likely to do.” Which was an admission to all three of us that there really were things I wouldn’t do.

I could see that Martin was biting his tongue on the desire to ask for more information. It was more kindness to Luke than I’d expected from Martin.

Part of me didn’t want to be that kind, but mostly I wasn’t sure if telling Martin about the maze would bother Luke at all as long as we weren’t going to send him there. Instead, I asked, “Are we having that conversation now?” I really didn’t want to. Ever.

Martin hesitated, and I was pretty sure he was deciding how far to push me. He sighed. “No.”

“You didn’t have to come.”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “I wanted to. And not just to lecture you.” His smile was a little crooked. “There are plenty of paths by which you and I could have ended up here.”

Instead of me and Luke, he meant. Whatever I’d thought he might say, it hadn’t been that. “Neither of us is given to betrayal.”

“No, but we are both capable of this.” Martin waved a hand to indicate the entire room. “And I never quite understood why you didn’t want the throne. You’d been told all of your life that it was your destiny, and then you… just turned away.” His eyes searched my face. “You had so very few friends that I could see power being very, very attractive as a substitute.”

“Sycophants instead?” I laughed a little and knew that no one in the room would think I meant it. I pulled Luke in to lean against my leg and started stroking his hair. He sighed and relaxed a little. “Once the Unicorn chose your father, there was never a chance I would. A different king or queen might have led me in a different direction. Or if you hated your father and wanted him dead, I suppose. I’d have had no reason not to help with that, not once the Shadowstorm passed. Hell, if you want the throne now, I’d probably help, and I actually like your father. He’s been good to me.”

I think all of us knew there was no probably about it.

“I don’t betray first,” I said. I’m not sure that Martin had really understood that when I’d said it to him a few days before. Perhaps he’d understood but hadn’t realized how important it was.

“And if I had betrayed you?” Martin’s tone was gentle, but there was a hard push behind it.

My breath hissed through my teeth. “Then you’d find out what Luke is so fucking scared of.” For a moment, terror that Martin had, in fact, betrayed me froze my guts. Then I made myself remember that he hadn’t, that I knew that he hadn’t, that I knew he wouldn’t. I looked at him and said, “Don’t, please.” I couldn’t have borne it.

He nodded. “Benedict and Brand, together, taught me about the family. Looking at Benedict, I wondered why he stayed away. Brand…” His eyes rested on Luke. “Brand taught me why.” His hands clenched then unclenched. “I was afraid-- after the Unicorn chose-- that I would have to choose, too. Thank you for not making me.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I don’t know which of us would have ended up in this room, but it would have been one of us.”

Because neither one of us could have killed the other or let anyone else do it.

“If I’d traveled with you then,” Martin went on, “maybe this incredibly fucked up situation wouldn’t have happened at all. I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “I don’t think that Luke’s choices are in any way your fault.”

Martin shrugged. He considered Luke for a few seconds, his eyes moving over Luke’s body in a way that told me that Martin saw the beauty there, too, that, whatever Martin might do to Luke, it wasn’t just about healing me. 

Martin wanted to fuck Luke. I hadn’t thought that was a possibility.

I wondered what Martin would do if I kissed him. Then I pushed that thought away. Someone might find out. But who? Neither Ghostwheel nor Luke would tell. My people knew I was… somewhat undiscriminating.

“Do you want him now?” I asked softly. “He’ll blow you again, if you want, and his ass is very, very nice.” I nudged Luke away from my leg. “He also bruises really beautifully and tries very hard not to make noise when one hurts him.”

Luke did that now because knew that I preferred to hear sounds I’d forced from him. At first, he’d overreacted to pain, trying to make me think I was hurting him worse than I was. He’d had time to learn better.

Martin’s expression became just a little predatory. “He doesn’t fight?”

“Do you want him to?” I wasn’t sure Luke could, but I rather expected that he’d try if I told him to.

“I think it might be more satisfying if I have to work a little.” Martin shrugged. He met my eyes then looked away. “I think… I actually am that kind of predator.” He didn’t look entirely unhappy about it, more like he thought he should be and wasn’t.

I knew that one. “It might take a little time to come up with a real challenge in that direction.”

Martin stood. He walked over to where I sat and prodded Luke with his foot. “I think I do want to fuck him now.”

I waved a hand around the room. “Anywhere you’d like.” I very deliberately reached out and touched Martin’s hand. If he wasn’t interested, we could both pretend it was accidental.

He froze, just for a second, then smiled. He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine. No way to pretend that was accidental.

A laugh curled in my throat, and I put my arms around his neck to keep him from pulling away as I kissed back. 

When we came up for air, I was grinning.

“That’s been a long time coming,” he said. He ran his thumb along my face, just to one side of my mouth.

“I never let myself consider it,” I admitted. “Mother told me that men in the family don’t--” I shook my head.

He laughed. “That’s another not where Oberon could see it thing. I have no idea why he cared about that any more than I know why he deliberately pushed his daughters aside. Given where he came from, I don’t know why he’d think any of it mattered.”

I couldn’t think of a reason either. “I don’t want to talk about Oberon right now.” I was a lot more interested in kissing Martin again. I reached for him.

I’m not sure exactly what Luke did, but suddenly, we were both looking at him.

We must have looked angry at the interruption because he shrank down, pulling himself in as tight as he could, and closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see what was coming.

I hesitated. I looked at Martin, and he looked at me. We both looked at Luke again.

Martin shrugged.

I sighed. I’d worked hard to get Luke to react like that, and now, it irritated me. “I’m not sure what else to do with him,” I said. I think Martin understood, but I very much doubt that Luke did. I looked up at Martin. “He doesn’t have to be here right now.”

Martin studied my face.

Luke opened his eyes. I was pretty sure he was trying to figure out if anything he might do could tilt things, one way or another. Seeing that calculation was something of a relief.

I took a steadying breath. “Having me doesn’t preclude doing whatever the hell you want with him. Now or some other time. But, like I said, he doesn’t have to be here. Or, you know, we could leave. I’ve got plenty of nice places we could go, and I’m sure he’d be relieved.” I hesitated. “Not that seeing you fuck him wouldn’t be hot, but… We’ve got time.”

“Yeah.” Martin tugged me to my feet.

I couldn’t tell what he wanted, and I was pretty sure that was deliberate on his part, so I gripped his shoulder and squeezed just a little. “Kissing me is not therapy.” I let a little anger into that.

He regarded me levelly. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” He put a hand on top of the one I had on his shoulder. “I actually can’t think of much I could do that would fuck you up worse than that. At least not that I could do with actual good intentions.”

At least he was honest. I didn’t want to look at Martin, so I looked at Luke. “On the bed.”

Luke started to stand then thought the better of it and crawled to the bed. He stood just long enough to get himself actually up onto it. He knelt there with his back to us and waited.

“Does he ever enjoy any of it?” Martin’s question was quiet enough that I’m not sure Luke heard.

I kept my eyes on Luke and answered equally quietly, “Sometimes. And sometimes, we just… I just visit and spend time here. I even-- once in a while-- relent when he begs.” I took a deep breath. “I let him know, as soon as I arrive, what he should expect. Whatever else I do, I don’t lie to him.”

“How long were you there?” Martin’s question was a little louder than his previous one. Luke almost certainly heard.

I clenched one hand and rubbed that wrist with my other hand. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “At least two years. Plus however long it was before I… came back to myself.” I tried to force my shoulders to relax. “It was… quite a long time, after, before I brought him here. A long time for me. Years, definitely. I thought time would-- It didn’t. I… tried other things before-- This.” It hadn’t been anything like as long for Luke. I didn’t know everywhere he’d been, but only weeks had passed at Jasra’s keep before we rescued my children.

“Ah.” Martin moved in close and leaned against me.

I was pretty sure he was reminding me that I wasn’t alone or, at least, that I didn’t have to be. “He never gets to say no.” I thought that was the important part. “Neither of us ever pretend he could.”

“Do you want to be kind or cruel right now?” Martin’s voice was very quiet again.

I hesitated. “A little of both.” I turned to look at Martin. “But that might actually be crueler. He… a little pain and being helpless turns him on, and I play with that. But he’s ashamed to have you see him take pleasure in being… mine.” The last word was harder, harsher than I’d meant it to be. I’d meant it as simple fact, but I was also challenging Martin. If he wanted me, Luke was part of that. Luke might not want to be, but he didn’t get a say.

“It’s going to happen eventually,” Martin said evenly. “When is up to you. Not him.”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes for a moment and pretended that it was just me and Martin in the room. “There are-- Some of what I do--” I shook my head. “I’m a shapeshifter, Martin.” I wasn’t sure if he knew what that meant.

He laughed softly. “And I’m not. Seriously, Merlin, I know. I spent more than a decade in the Courts. You wouldn’t be my first.”

I really hoped Dara hadn’t been. Or Mandor. I made myself look at that. Mostly, I didn’t want to be doing something else that they’d done first. Was that worth giving up Martin? 

Not a chance.

I gave Martin a smile then pulled away from him and walked over to Luke.

His back twitched, but he didn’t give any other sign that he heard me approaching. He knew there wasn’t anything he could do.

I ran my fingers along his spine. “I was going to be brutal,” I told him, “and that will happen. Just not today.”

Luke inhaled sharply. “I’d rather that,” he said very quietly. “Please.”

He wasn’t as stupid as he used to be.

“I want this.” I leaned in close and spoke those words into his ear. I knew he’d understand that I wasn’t giving him a choice. “You’re going to give us honesty.” I put a little extra emphasis on the ‘us.’

He fell forward on his hands. “Yes, Merlin.”

I almost couldn’t hear him.

I gave him the mercy of tying him down. It wouldn’t completely erase the shame, but it meant I wasn’t demanding that he choose repeatedly not to fight. We both knew he would if I asked it. I think we both knew, too, how deeply that cooperation would cut him.


	11. In which Merlin and Martin talk while Luke listens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Semi-explicit but not exactly. Non-con.

Luke didn’t beg. No matter what we did, he didn’t say anything. He made noise, though, plenty of noise, both of pleasure and of pain. 

It took me a surprisingly long time to realize that not speaking, not begging, was his way of coping with Martin’s presence. When I did realize, I was sitting on the bed next to him, touching him in ways that I knew would give him physical pleasure, while Martin fucked him again.

Luke’s eyes were squeezed shut, and his jaw was set.

I pressed lightly on the hinge of his jaw, more to get his attention than anything else. Not that I thought he wasn’t completely aware of where I was and what I was doing. 

He turned his head toward me, but he didn’t open his eyes.

I sighed. “Luke, what am I going to do with you? You’ll get used to this faster if you don’t fight. We both know that.” I brushed his hair off his face and noted that I needed to cut it again.

He tried to pull away from me. He shook his head. His lips parted, and I thought he might speak, but he pressed them together again without allowing any sound out but a whimper.

I put a hand on either side of his face and held him so that I could press my lips against his.

There was more than a little desperation in his response to the kiss, and at that moment, I liked that better than tears, so I kept kissing him. I could feel Luke’s body moving as Martin fucked him, so I knew when Martin finished even though I barely heard the small noise that was Martin’s only overt acknowledgment of orgasm.

Luke tugged on the straps that held his arms. He didn’t usually do that any more because he knew as well as I did that he couldn’t break free.

I took it as a sign of how off balance Luke was. I finally broke the kiss and pulled back enough that I could see Luke’s face.

Luke lifted his head, trying to follow me, then gave up and fell back onto the mattress. He mouthed my name then closed his eyes again. He looked tired and frightened and somehow diminished. I think that last had arrived gradually, over many months, and I just hadn’t noticed.

I sighed and ran my thumb along one of his eyebrows. “Sometimes, I’m sorry,” I told him softly. “Not enough to stop but… a little.” I heard Martin moving and looked up to see him coming up to stand behind me.

Martin put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

I managed a smile, and he smiled back. I put a hand on his, and our fingers interlaced.

“What do you want?” Martin asked me.

I hesitated. If it had been just me and Luke, I’d either have unbound him and pampered him a bit or moved him elsewhere so that I could hurt him differently, probably drugging him so that I could watch him suffer without having to lift a finger. Now, I wasn’t sure I wanted Martin to see me do either. I’d invited Martin in. I’d enjoyed watching him play with Luke. I’d enjoyed sharing Luke.

But… I didn’t want to share how I felt about Luke. I didn’t want to have feelings about Luke at all. Usually, I’d solve that by hurting Luke badly to show how much I didn’t care. I could almost convince myself that way. I have no idea if Luke understood what I was doing. He might have. He used to be good with people.

Luke opened his eyes and looked up at me and Martin. His expression went flat, as if hiding what he felt might offer some protection against what we might choose to do. It was a protection made of tissue paper, but it was all he had left.

“Whatever I do, you’re not going to stop me.” I wasn’t sure if I was asking Martin a question or not.

“That’s not why I’m here.” Martin put his other hand on my other shoulder. “I’m just-- You don’t have to carry this shit alone.”

For a few seconds, I couldn’t speak. I just shook my head.

“I don’t think,” Martin went on, “that stopping you would help.”

I couldn’t look at Luke any longer. “I’m kind sometimes.” I was, too. Luke and I sometimes had meals together, both of us at the table, and I sometimes read to him, mostly books from Earth since we had shared context there. I often held him after… After.

Martin rested his head on mine. It was a different sort of intimacy than I’d had-- than I’d allowed-- in years. His body was warm against my back.

I stiffened a little then made myself relax. I knew Martin wouldn’t hurt me, but… “I used to know he wouldn’t hurt me.” I was pretty sure that Martin would hear the apology in my words.

Martin sighed and didn’t move. “Yeah. I know.” After a moment, he started massaging my shoulders.

I was glad Martin didn’t try to tell me that Luke couldn’t hurt me any more. I knew that part very well. I just also knew that I hadn’t managed to let go of the pain. “Maybe,” I said after several seconds. “Maybe what I need is to get all zen and detached and shit.”

Martin snorted laughter. “Right.” He was silent for a moment then said, “Though, if you think some sort of meditation and philosophy would help, I’ll find somebody.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you know what Zen is.” I didn’t even try to keep amusement out of my voice. I made myself look at Luke again.

His jaw was set, but his face was otherwise expressionless. I wasn’t sure if that had changed at all while I’d been looking elsewhere.

“Do you still want him?” Martin asked.

I was pretty sure he was talking about right then as opposed to ever again, but I still twitched. “Still and probably always,” I admitted. I touched Luke’s face.

He didn’t flinch.

“I think I still love him.” Saying that hurt like hell. Usually, I’d pass that sort of pain on to Luke, but I kind of thought I needed to carry this myself.

“No shit,” Martin said.

I hadn’t thought Luke could go more completely still, but he did. I’m pretty sure he thought about saying something, but he didn’t. He had to know that almost anything he could say would be a mistake.

Martin kept massaging my shoulders. I think that’s all that kept me from pulling them up to my ears. “I was thinking more,” he said at last, “about whether or not you want to keep him like this or do something else with him or leave altogether or… Well, anything.”

I didn’t actually have an answer right then. I stroked Luke’s face and waited to see if he’d respond.

Eventually, he shuddered and turned his face toward my hand and nuzzled my fingers.

I let him. I let Martin stand pressed up against my back, too, and keep rubbing my shoulders. The only reason I wasn’t crying was that I’d shifted my eyes so that I couldn’t. I’d have been okay with Martin seeing that, but I really wasn’t ready for Luke to. I might never be.

After a minute or two, I cleared my throat. “I think we can unbind his legs. Straightening them is going to hurt like hell.” I didn’t pretend, even to myself, that I wouldn’t enjoy that. I pulled away from Martin and twisted to look up at him. “If I love him, why do I want that? Want all of this?”

“Contrary to what you might think,” Martin told me dryly, “I am not all knowing. There’s a lot about you that’s still a mystery to me.”

“But you’ve got theories.”

“Well, yes. I’ve always got theories.” Martin ran a hand over my head, smoothing my hair. “You hated him, too, at one point.” He pressed his lips together for a moment then added, as if he thought I needed to be reminded, “You can’t let him go. You can’t ever let him go.”

“I know. I’m pretty sure he knows, too.” I didn’t bother looking at Luke to see if I was right because it really didn’t matter. I made myself meet Martin’s eyes. “I think… I love you, too. But you knew that, right?”

“I had gotten that, yes.” Martin grinned at me, offering me shared joy. Then he sobered. “It’s different, though. You found him. No politics. No back stabbing. No careful evaluations. No risk of the apocalypse. Except…”

“He lied to me.”

“Yeah. Are you ever going to forgive yourself for believing him?”

Because I couldn’t forgive him until I forgave myself. 

“I’m not… unhappy.” I think I was trying to convince myself as much as Martin. “I like having a place of my own, people of my own. And… this.” I let my eyes wander the room because that was easier than looking at Martin or-- even worse-- Luke. “You won’t always stay,” I told Martin. “I wouldn’t ask it of you, either.” We both knew I could make him stay. I wouldn’t, but I could.

Martin kissed the top of my head then turned away to start unbinding one of Luke’s legs. Without looking at me, he asked, “Do you ever leave?”

I hesitated. “Not often and not for long,” I admitted at last. “At first, I couldn’t because the place would fall apart. Now… There isn’t that much I want out there. Things for my people.” I cleared my throat. “Things for him.” Nice things for Luke, actually. I wondered if I should clarify that part but decided against it. Luke might guess, but Martin wouldn’t care.

And neither of them needed to know who I’d killed in the Courts.

Martin massaged Luke’s leg as he slowly straightened it. It was a kindness I probably wouldn’t have given.

I didn’t comment. I looked at Luke.

His eyes were firmly fixed on Martin. I was pretty sure Luke was trying to figure out if there were any strings he could pull to get Martin to-- not help him so much as make things a little better. He still tried to play me when he thought he could get away with it.

Martin could take care of himself.

I surprised myself by speaking again. “The things I want, the things that aren’t in here, aren’t out there, either.” I made myself look at that. What I wanted… Safety, first, but also people I could trust, people who were my equals. I took a deep breath and felt myself shake. I had Ghostwheel, and some day, he’d have siblings. Would that be enough?

There were other possibilities, but I really wasn’t ready to look at those. Mostly, they involved things I wasn’t willing to do or wasn’t sure I could do. I didn’t want to be a monster, not entirely, and betrayal would always be possible. Betrayal of me. Betrayal by me.

Power tended to do that.

At least Luke deserved what I was doing. And he couldn’t hurt me because he’d already hurt me as much as he possibly could.

I reached for Luke, gripping the hair on the top of his head and forcing him to turn to face me. Then I kissed him. Because I wanted to. Because he couldn’t say no. Because he wanted to say no.

He made a small desperate noise deep in his throat. I’m not sure if he was begging me to stop or wanting the kiss to last as long as possible because he was afraid that something worse was coming.

When I pulled back, Martin was massaging Luke’s other leg and regarding me thoughtfully. He saw me looking and offered me a crooked smile. “That’s kind of hot.”

That wasn’t what he’d been thinking. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. I didn’t think that calling him on it would help anything. Instead, I returned his smile. “I think we’ve both enjoyed watching the other enjoy… doing things to him.” I hesitated. Would I think it as hot if Martin and I were playing with someone else? Maybe and maybe not, but Martin might. He’d said he was that kind of predator, and he had no emotional connection to Luke.

I sighed and stroked Luke’s throat. “Anyone Ghostwheel can find could end up here,” I told Martin softly. “He’s offered that before.”

Martin went entirely still.

I shrugged. “Like this or completely different.” I managed something near a smile. “I want to be sure you have reason to come back.” I looked at Luke again. “I’m pretty sure your father saw that about Ghostwheel immediately. Luke sure as hell did. Though he was mostly thinking about ways of killing people. His revenge schemes were… surprisingly clean, given the family. Random knows that there are worse things than dying.”

I didn’t want to look at Martin. I’d just admitted that I might be the most dangerous person in all of Shadow, and that was without talking about Ghostwheel’s siblings. “I don’t intend to attack Amber,” I told him, “not as long as Amber doesn’t attack us.” I still didn’t think Martin needed to know what Ghostwheel and I had done and were doing in the Courts. Mandor might figure it out now that he knew Ghostwheel existed at all, but I wasn’t sure Mandor understood the full scope of what Ghostwheel could do.

“You might,” Martin said after a few seconds of silence, “have something Dara would want enough to give up Corwin.”

I was pretty sure that he was avoiding all of the other implications of what I’d said which was fair enough since I intended to avoid the implications of what he’d just said.

For as long as I could, anyway.

Instead I looked at Luke. He had an expression of calculation that I hadn’t seen from him in years. It vanished the moment he realized I was looking at him.

I smiled to let him know that I wasn’t going to punish him for thinking. “Is there something you’d like right now, Luke?”

He coughed a little and worked his jaw. “Water. Food. A chance to wash.” All small things. All things I’d denied him from time to time, things I could deny him now. His eyes told me he knew I might. He just knew that, if he didn’t ask, I might or might not bother to provide and that me asking was a signal that I didn’t intend to leave any time soon. Once I left, he could do what he liked.

I usually didn’t leave him unconscious or unable to move. I’d come too close to killing him accidentally in the first week I had him. I had a better sense of his limits now, and he’d gotten tougher because he had to.

I touched his cheek and rubbed my thumb along his cheekbone. “Water now. A wash… After Martin and I have one. Food…” I hesitated. I glanced at Martin but couldn’t read his expression. I wondered if he wanted me to be kinder or more cruel.

Luke was holding his breath. He knew as well as I did that I never knew what I was going to do to him, not until I did it.

I wondered if Martin knew.

I raised my eyebrows. “There are any number of things I’d enjoy,” I told Luke. “The overlap of that set with things you’ll enjoy…” I shrugged. I looked at Martin. “At some point, I’d like to show you how much he can take, but I think… not just now.”

I got water for Luke then untied him and let him drink while Martin showered. I wasn’t entirely certain about leaving the two of them alone together while I showered, but it had to happen eventually.

When I came back out, Martin was sitting in one of the chairs with Luke kneeling at his feet. Neither of them looked unhappy or like they were trying to keep secrets from me. Martin smiled at me and patted Luke on the back.

Luke looked at me, and I knew he was waiting for permission to go and wash.

I flicked my fingers in the direction of the bathroom, and he went. After he’d gone, I used a spell to clean the bedding and freshen the air. Sleeping in the filth might remind him of how little he mattered, but I wanted the bed clean for the next time I slept there.

“Ah,” Martin said. “I’d wondered.”

“He almost died from an infection once.” I hadn’t meant to reveal that, but somehow I felt relieved to share the fact.

Martin looked surprised.

“I over-estimated his endurance. The place I kept him wasn’t… very clean. That wouldn’t normally matter, but he was hungry and thirsty and cold, and I didn’t let him sleep.”

“The place he doesn’t want to go back to.”

I took the other chair. “The maze. He can’t see in the dark. Sometimes, there are other things in there with him.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I haven’t sent him there in months.”

“Are you going to?” Martin’s tone was carefully neutral.

“If I have to.” I opened my eyes and looked directly at Martin. “I’d rather not have to, and… I don’t think he’s going to make it necessary. He actually wants to hold onto pieces of himself.”

Martin glanced at the door to the bathroom.

I smiled. “He’s going to take as long as he thinks he can get away with.” Which would be longer right at the moment than it normally would be. Luke was smart enough to realize that Martin being there made a difference.

Martin nodded. He didn’t say anything for a moment. When he did, he surprised me. “Do you think you could… find Dalt? He’s the last of Jasra’s dangerous allies. At least that we know about.”

“I don’t know who Dalt is,” I admitted, “but it’s possible. It’s more likely if we have a small area to search or if we have a Trump.”

Martin’s smile was a little crooked. “Oberon raped his mother, so he’s an uncle. Damned if I know how he got to the Pattern, but…” He spread his hands wide. “Doing something about him would go a long way toward convincing Dad that you’re on his side.”

“I’m not actually.” I was pretty sure Martin knew that, but I kind of thought I needed to say it. “I also-- You’re the only one I’ve made that offer to. Probably the only one I will.” I looked at my hands. “I don’t know if this place will stand a serious assault. I’ve tried to make it so it could, but I don’t know.” I rolled my shoulders. “Do you want him dead or imprisoned? If the latter, I’ll need to know what he can do.” Luke probably knew, and there was no question at all that he’d tell me. I just wasn’t sure I wanted him to know. It was too close to knowing that his mother was dead.

“I’m pretty sure I can get a Trump of him.” Martin sounded thoughtful, hesitant even. “I… I can’t imagine what use there’d be in keeping him alive, but the family’s not that large.” He took a deep breath. “And I could see me doing what he’s doing if Benedict hadn’t been kind or, later, if Dara and Oberon hadn’t found me. At that point, I was more than three quarters convinced that everyone had to die if I was going to survive. I just didn’t see how the hell I could do that.

“I have noticed,” he went on, “that Oberon’s children generally go to great lengths not to actually kill each other even when it would make sense to.” He rolled his shoulders as if trying to release tension, and I’m pretty sure we were both thinking of Brand. “I’m not sure… Benedict put a sword through Dalt, and Dalt survived. Either Dalt’s hellishly tough, or Benedict wasn’t trying to kill him.”

So Martin would kill Dalt. He’d feel bad about it, but he’d do it. He thought, however, that the rest of the family wanted him alive. I just nodded.

Neither of us said anything for a while. Then I asked the question that had been on my mind. “Should I be kinder to Luke?”

“Do you want to be?”

“Sometimes. I just… I don’t think it’s a sometimes thing, not if it’s really real.” I glanced at the bathroom door. I was pretty sure Luke wouldn’t come out for at least another five minutes, but I definitely didn’t want him hearing this. “I might like myself better.”

“I’m not sure that what you do or don’t do with Luke has much to do with that.” Martin looked very serious. “I think--” He shook his head. “You’re not going to like this.”

I already didn’t, but I shrugged and waved for him to go on.

“I think it’s more not forgiving yourself for the things Luke and Jasra did. The things you think you let them do. You’re not weak. You’re not stupid. You’re not even naive. You just-- Well, Luke fucked you over pretty thoroughly in the metaphorical sense.” His expression told me we weren’t going to address the literal sense. “It’s no more your fault than it’s my fault his father stabbed me.” When he went on, his voice was softer, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t seeing me. “I still… I think about what I could have done differently or how I should have known better or been smarter or… Yeah. It’s shitty, but we fuck ourselves over, too.”

He was right. I didn’t want him to be, but he was right.

He still didn’t look at me. “Would it be easier-- being kinder or not-- if I wasn’t here?”

Yes. I swallowed hard. “I want you here.” That was true, too. “I want-- I want to be honest with you. I want to share with you. I want--” How could I explain? “You’re not him. I don’t want you to think that I might-- I won’t.”

“You could.” Martin’s expression was beyond my ability to read. “I don’t think either of us will forget that. Do you want to?”

I shook my head. Then I turned the idea over in my head. “No. Not this. Not you. What he wants doesn’t ever actually matter. What you want… That matters a lot.” Ghostwheel wouldn’t stop me from keeping Martin. They’d barely talked at all. But, although I did very badly want Martin to stay, I couldn’t imagine forcing him to do so. “There are things I won’t do, and that… I don’t actually want to.”

Martin studied me for a moment then smiled. “Finding a Trump of Dalt might take a little time. I could leave you here with him while I do that. I think-- I could do it from my rooms if Ghostwheel was willing to help. It’s just a matter of asking the right people.” He looked up and around the room, the first indication he’d given that he knew Ghostwheel was watching.

“If that’s what you want.” I considered arguing, but it would be easier-- simpler-- if he wasn’t there. I suspected at that point that Martin, like me, wanted contradictory things. Luke suffering turned Martin on, but Martin wasn’t convinced that it was good for me. Pleasurable, yes, but not actually healthy. And whatever about me turned Martin on, it wasn’t the ways I was broken.

He stood, and I followed suit. He grinned at me and took a step toward me. I answered it so that we met in the middle. That kiss-- Well, it made me want so much more. I started wondering about tomorrow and places that weren’t Luke’s prison. Maybe a picnic somewhere without people…

I’d never taken Luke on a picnic, and I suddenly kind of wanted to. I wished he’d been someone-- something-- else, someone I could do that sort of thing with. It occurred to me that, if I wanted it, he’d make himself into that, and I felt a little sick. It would be false, of course. I’d never be able to trust him unless I broke him beyond recognition.

Martin pulled back from the kiss. “You’re distracted.” It wasn’t quite accusation in his voice. There was too much amusement for that. “I’d push you up against the wall and make you pay attention, but--” He shook his head.

Oh. Oh. “They--” I swallowed hard. “Jasra wanted me to act willing. I’m not sure… I don’t think she could have overwhelmed me physically. Luke--” My mouth went dry. I hadn’t talked about this with anyone. “He beat me sometimes--” Frequently actually. “--but that was always… separate. I might still be hurt when he-- Yes. He didn’t deliberately hurt me then.” Not physically, anyway. “He just… nothing I said would make him stop.” I looked away. I hadn’t meant to tell Martin all of that.

I still don’t know what Luke would have done if I’d resisted physically. I’d been with Jasra so long with death promised for anything like that that I just assumed. Maybe he’d just have beaten me. Maybe I would have died. 

Maybe he really thought I wanted it.

“I will. I always will,” Martin promised.

“I know.” I did. “I just may need you to prove it sometimes.” I hesitated then added, “I will, too. Promise.”

He grinned at me. Then he looked at the bathroom door. “Should he be taking this long?”

“I told him not to come out,” Ghostwheel said.

Martin started then laughed. “Of course, you did.”

Ghostwheel spun in the air, suddenly visible and larger than my head. “Are you sure, Merlin?”

So that’s what that was about. “I am,” I told Ghostwheel firmly. “Maybe you two need to get to know each other?” I didn’t think Ghostwheel was jealous, just worried that Martin would hurt me and that Ghostwheel would fail to see it for what it was. After all, he had trusted Luke and been wrong.

Martin’s lips quirked in a faint smile. 

I hoped that meant that he understood Ghostwheel’s reservations. I was a little worried about what might happen when it was just the two of them. I didn’t think that Ghostwheel would actually hurt Martin, but he might try to scare him, and I wasn’t completely sure Ghostwheel knew how to judge that. “Ghostwheel, I actually do want this,” I said. “It may be brief. It may not be. I just want to find out.”

Martin brushed his fingers along my cheek and stepped back. “We’ll have time later.” He looked up at Ghostwheel. “I’m ready to go now.” He gave me a cheerful wave as Ghostwheel swallowed him up.


	12. In which Merlin does something nice for Luke

About thirty seconds later, the bathroom door opened, and Luke peeked out.

“Here,” I said, pointing to a spot about a foot away from me.

He hesitated just long enough to look around.

When Luke was in front of me, I took hold of his chin. “It’s just us now.” I leaned in and kissed him. He opened for me very sweetly, so I took my time about it and didn’t even try to think about what to do next.

“I kind of want to fuck you again,” I told him when I ended the kiss.

He didn’t move at all, just looked at me and waited for me to tell him what to do.

“Would you enjoy that?” I could see him trying to decide what answer I wanted. I smiled. “No penalty for the truth, Luke.”

He looked at the floor and said, “No. Please.”

“Do you ever enjoy it?” I tugged his chin up to force him to look at me again.

He gave me a very wobbly smile, as if he wanted it there but couldn’t quite manage it, and didn’t answer for several seconds. “I want to.” He couldn’t meet my eyes.

“Sometimes, it would be okay.” I ran my thumb over his lips. “Sometimes, not.” I moved to one of the chairs, tugging him along with me. I sat, and he knelt. I ran my fingers through his hair. “There will be food in a bit,” I told him. I knew he’d understand that to mean that, if I did hurt him, it wouldn’t be beyond bearing.

He relaxed a little. He closed his eyes and leaned against my knee.

I rubbed his back and stroked his head for a while. After a while, I started speaking. “I’ve found things that terrify you, haven’t I? Things you don’t want but can’t avoid. Many, many ways to take you beyond what you can bear. I like all of that. A lot.”

He was tensing up under my hand, so I stopped talking for a while until he relaxed again.

“It’s not even about being angry at you any more,” I admitted. “I just wanted to hurt you, hurt you worse than you hurt me. Now… Spending time with you, knowing I could do anything, makes me happy.” It was kind of a lie, but I wasn’t sure he’d understand that. I was happier with him than anywhere else.

Except with Martin. I had that now, for however long it lasted, and he might keep coming back. I might get that lucky.

“You’re beautiful. I don’t tell you that, but you are. Not just how you bruise or how you scream. Those are damn nice, of course, but not just that. I don’t think that makes any of this better for you, but… I thought I should tell you.”

He was crying. I wasn’t sure when he started.

I sighed and stroked his head some more. “I think I knew you hated me when you stopped telling me what an asshole I was. I’m not so sure when you gave up hating me. Hush. It doesn’t actually matter.” I didn’t say anything else for a while. I offered him the extremely thin comfort of a gentle touch.

“I don’t think-- Was there ever a time when me never coming back didn’t terrify you?” I didn’t really expect an answer, and I think he knew that. I felt him tremble under my hand. “I suppose I’m just hurting you in a different way right now. That wasn’t my intention.”

He looked up at me. When he spoke, his voice shook. “You’re still an asshole, Merlin.”

I regarded him seriously for a moment then nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to change.” I was pretty sure he’d said it more because he thought I wanted it than because he meant it. I leaned down and kissed the tears off his face.

“Would you rather go to bed and have me hold you or have food now?” I was a little hungry, but I wanted to give him a choice. Waiting wouldn’t hurt me.

He sniffled and pressed his face against my leg.

I wasn’t sure if he was actually overwhelmed or if he was trying to play me. If he was trying to play me, it was a long game sort of thing. I’d given him two options that he would-- well, ‘enjoy’ might be the wrong word, but neither would hurt, and both were things he usually wanted. I made a soothing noise, slipped out of the chair and onto the floor next to Luke, and shifted shape so that I could wrap myself around him more completely than just my arms.

There was a time when that would have panicked him, but he’d had years to get used to me doing things like that. I’m pretty sure he knew I was offering comfort because he practically sagged against me.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t. Please, Merlin. Don’t.”

I had no glimmering of an idea what he meant. I didn’t think it had to do with the choice between food and cuddling. Perhaps it was about Martin. If it was, Luke would have to bear it. I wasn’t minded to be that kind.

But it was more likely to do with what I’d been saying. I cradled him close. “I wasn’t intending to hurt you just now, Luke.” That was as close to an apology as I was going to give him. “I’m not going to abandon you. I’m not going to go back to what we-- what I-- did early on. It’s possible, probable even, that I won’t send you back to the maze. I won’t say never, but you’re generally so very good. Why would I?”

He shuddered, and he seemed to be trying to silence a sob.

That surprised me. I had thought he had surrendered enough to show me everything. I considered that and decided not to take it from him. I certainly could. Instead, I stroked his face and didn’t say anything.

After a few minutes, when he didn’t stop crying, I lifted him and stood. I took him to the bed and laid him on it. I climbed in next to him and got the blanket over us. When I pulled him close he buried his head against my shoulder. I rubbed his back and murmured his name a few times. I didn’t let my hands go as far down as his ass, both because I wasn’t trying to be sexual or threatening and because I knew that we’d left some pretty nasty bruises there.

Eventually, he stopped crying. I’d say he calmed, but I don’t actually know that he did. I suspected that he’d just gotten overwhelmed by things that he normally didn’t let himself look at. Things like the possibility of change-- for better or worse-- and how long it had been and how long it would be. He might even be remembering that there were people he loved somewhere outside and hating himself for having forgotten.

I sighed and pulled him closer. “I think I’m actually going to do something nice for you, Luke.” I shouldn’t. I definitely shouldn’t. But I was going to. “Do you think you’re up to putting on some clothes?” He probably didn’t need them, but I thought he’d feel better that way.

He shook his head once then shuddered and nodded.

“I think you’ll like it. If you don’t, we’ll... stop.”

He tried to press closer against me.

“It doesn’t have to be now.” If it wasn’t, I was pretty sure I’d change my mind and have to come up with something else, but I didn’t want to put that pressure on him.

He rubbed his face against my shirt, and I realized that he was trying to dry his eyes. He was probably getting snot all over me. 

I wondered if he’d even thought about that. It might be a minor revenge. But I didn’t think he was capable of that, not any more. And me holding him while he cried-- I’d been doing that since the beginning, and it had always been messy.

I was pretty sure I was just trying to not think too much about whether or not I should do what I was definitely going to do. I leaned my head against his. “You’ve been very good today, Luke. I’m pleased.”

His breathing was starting to steady.

“If you want to say something, it’s okay,” I told him.

He made a couple of sounds that puzzled me until I realized he was trying to get himself to a point where he could speak. “Please, Merlin. I don’t think-- I don’t think I can--”

We both knew he could and would if I demanded it. “I don’t have anything like that in mind.” I wanted to surprise him, but I was panicking him instead. “I want to take you somewhere, both of us together and nowhere terrible.” Belatedly, it occurred to me that that prospect might terrify him simply because it was new. “There still won’t be a door, but I think you’ll enjoy it.”

"Somewhere— else?" He sounded like he’d almost choked on the words.

"Yes. There won’t be anybody else there, and it should be warm enough, but I think you’ll feel better if you’re dressed." I hesitated. He didn’t have any shoes. He hadn’t needed shoes in three years. He was going to want shoes. 

I tried to remember if there were shoes in the pile of possessions Ghostwheel had dumped in that storage room. I’d looked things over, mostly because I wanted to figure out what the hell to do with Werewindle. Semi-sentient, indestructible swords that want very badly to be with their owners are… inconvenient at best, and I’d felt it working on me, trying to persuade me to pick it up and carry it to Luke. 

Not being suicidal, I hadn’t, just sealed the damned thing up as thoroughly as I could and put it somewhere where no one else was going to stumble on it. It was still on my list of things I wanted to research and run tests on, but I kept moving it lower down.

But shoes… There had to be. Shoes or boots. Luke wouldn’t have been traveling barefoot. Even if they’d started to disintegrate from neglect, they’d tell me his size, and I could pull something in from Shadow.

"Do you think you can stand?" I asked him. I didn’t ask if he wanted to because I thought he’d be better off without the choice.

He didn’t speak, but I felt him nod, so I unwrapped myself from around his body and let him up. His face was red and splotchy from crying. He didn’t look at me as he went to where he’d left his clothes.

I stretched and reassembled myself in human form. Then I used the Logrus to look for shoes in the storage room where Luke’s things were collecting dust. I found a pair of leather boots that had probably once been very comfortable. At this point, they were only marginally wearable. The storage room was dry, and the leather had stiffened a lot. I pulled them to me anyway.

"You’re going to want something on your feet." I held up the boots. "These don’t look great, but they’ll probably fit better than anything I else I can find. I just… don’t think they’ll be very comfortable." I looked at them dubiously, mostly so I didn’t have to look at him. I hadn’t expected boots to produce a look of such pain. "Maybe with work and a lot of oil…" I still didn’t look at him. "What would you prefer?"

"I—" He cleared his throat. "I— Merlin, please, don’t. That’s harder."

"Ah." I measured the boots then sent them away. "That wasn’t my intention." I didn’t say I was sorry. I never said I was sorry.

He was dressed before I had shoes that I found satisfactory. He just stood and watched me pulling in and sending back pairs of shoes.

I kept two pairs, one pair of running shoes and one pair of hiking boots. I tossed him the running shoes. "For this time, these will be better. Those—" I indicated the boots. "—may or may not end up being useful some day. No promises."

I think that, by then, he had some solid guesses about what was coming. He was just afraid that he was wrong, that he was hoping for something he wouldn’t get. He put on the shoes, fumbling with the laces a bit.

I considered offering to help, but I didn’t think he wanted me to, and I knew he’d think he couldn’t say no.

When he had shoes on, I stood and made sure that I, too, was dressed. It didn’t matter so much for me, but I planned to stay mostly human. I beckoned him to come close, and he did. It wasn’t absolutely necessary. It just made things easier.

I used the Logrus to pull us to one of my private outdoor areas. This particular place was a grassy circle, not particularly big, surrounded by a wall with many openings. Each opening led to a section I’d pulled from a different Shadow. I’d taken enough of each to get a reasonable ecosystem, but I had avoided places with larger animals, more because I thought them more likely to cross into other areas and cause trouble than because I objected to them inherently. I’d also been careful about biting insects and anything poisonous, whether lethal or merely annoying.

People in the Courts would not have considered this wilderness. It was far too tame, but, when I’d stitched the pieces together, I’d had in mind that this might be somewhere pleasant I could take lovers, and I’d wanted them to be safe and comfortable.

Luke stood like a statue when I released the Logrus. He was staring up at the sky as if he couldn’t believe it was real. In this central section, the sky was mostly blue with a little red here and there, and the sun was yellow and about midway between noon and dusk.

I didn’t say anything, just waited to see what he would do. I wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to handle being outside for very long.

After almost a minute, he lowered his gaze and turned in a slow circle. Then he bent and ran both hands over the grass before digging his fingers into the dirt.

“There’s a tiny bit of a different world through each opening,” I told him. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I thought you could choose.”

He froze when I spoke.

“We don’t have to. This is a nice place, too.” I didn’t want to pressure him. I sat down and waited to see what he’d do. I was pretty sure that he’d try to Shadowshift. It wouldn’t get him anywhere, and I was pretty sure he knew that, but I thought he’d try. 

I took a moment to let my kitchen staff know that I wanted picnic food. The cook said I could have something in about half an hour if I wanted simple. Anything more elaborate would take longer. I hesitated briefly then said quick was better for the main meal but that I’d want dessert in three hours, possibly longer.

I kind of hoped that an extra special dessert might soften the loss when I took Luke back to his rooms.

Luke stood and turned in a circle. He paused briefly to study each gap in the wall.

That wouldn’t tell him much, so I said, “If you go closer, you’ll be able to see what’s through the gate.” 

I could see him shudder, and it took him a few seconds to take the first step. He took three steps then stopped and looked back at me. “Is there…” He shook his head. “Maybe… A beach?”

I stood. “Yes. There’s a beach.” I let a little laughter into my voice. “Do you think I’d make something like this without a beach? That one--” I pointed at the gap three places to his left. “You can go through if you’d like. Or I can go first.” I hoped he’d trust me enough to go first himself. I didn’t lie to him. He didn’t always remember that, though, because he knew that I could.

I was definitely going to lie if he asked about his mother.

He looked at me for a few seconds before starting toward the segment with the beach. His shoulders were tight, as if he wasn’t actually enjoying himself.

“Luke-- You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” he responded softly. “I want to very, very badly.” He stopped walking. “I know this might be only once, and… That will hurt like hell. The only thing worse would be being here and not--”

I had caught up to him. I laid my hand on his back. “The water’s safe for wading,” I told him. “It may still be too cold for swimming-- I’m not sure-- but if you want to, you can.” I felt ahead of us. “The air’s warm there, and the sun’s out.” I wasn’t ready to promise him anything more than that, not yet, but really, keeping him in his suite had been more about being cruel than about security. His odds of convincing Ghostwheel to help him escape wouldn’t change either way. His odds of convincing me to let him go wouldn’t change either.

It took Luke about fifteen minutes to convince himself to relax. Once he managed that, he ignored me and played in the water. He dug in the sand, too. 

I brought in a plastic shovel and bucket and offered them to him.

He accepted those and used them.

I wondered if he had memories of playing on a beach while his parents watched or even played with him, but asking seemed unnecessarily cruel. When our picnic meal was ready, I brought it in. I spread a blanket on the sand and set out the food. I ate a little, but I didn’t summon Luke back for the meal. I didn’t think the food would go bad, not even if he spent an hour or two.

He came to the blanket for food about half an hour after I had laid things out. He didn’t stay long. Hunger was something he knew well enough, and he probably thought it was a small price for more time.

I watched him and, as much as possible, let him forget I was there. I would have enjoyed wading, too, but that would have taken something from Luke. I took things from him all the time, but somehow, I didn’t quite want to take this.

**Author's Note:**

> The Martin/Merlin is consensual but doesn't go beyond a bit of kissing. Everything with Luke is non-con. There are references to past Jasra/Merlin non-con and to children resulting from that and to past physical and sexual abuse of Merlin by Luke.
> 
> Mandor appears in one scene. I didn't tag for him because its 1300 words out of 33000.
> 
> Merlin monologues a lot. I wasn't sure how to tag for that.
> 
> How various powers works was heavily influenced by Amber diceless rules.
> 
> There will be a sequel to this story. I've started it already, but I can tell that I couldn't finish it by the posting deadline for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang.


End file.
